Carol O’Connell
Winter House
This book is dedicated to a woman who had two wedding rings. My mother’s only marriage had outlasted the original gold band. On a cold day in February, I found that first ring my father had given to her. It was worn until it was worn out, thin and brittle, but not broken. And then she died.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to researcher Dianne Burke, who answers legal and medical questions and can chart the paths of binary stars with equal facility. And thanks to Phillip Skodinski, attorney-at-law. Any errors in this novel are surely my own. And any untoward humor at the expense of the legal profession is expressed by fictional people (not me); and, said humorous, though disparaging, remarks would not have been made if they had not been important to the plot – really – no, really.
And thanks to my brother Bruce for the gift of time; and thanks to cousins Norman, Melinda, Camille and Noel for an eleventh-hour visit that meant the world to me.
Chapter 1
THE HOUR WAS LATE. THE TRAFFIC WAS SCARCE. A FEW CARS crawled by at the pace of bugs attracted by house lights, five flights of electric-yellow windows.
The narrow mansion was not a rarity in New York City, home to millionaires and billionaires. However, its nineteenth-century facade was an anachronism on this particular block of Central Park West. The steep-pitched roof was split by a skylight dome, and attendant gargoyles were carved in stone. Wedged in tight between two condominium behemoths, this dwelling was in the wrong place at the wrong time and regally unrepentant, though the police were at the door.
And in the parlor, up the stairs and down in the cellar.