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The last thing he wanted to do was upset the woman even more than she already was. Whether he’d known Leigh well in the big scheme of things wasn’t something she needed to know or worry about.

The service was small but heartfelt. A woman named Pat, probably around sixty, stood up and said Leigh had been her best friend for twenty years and that nobody would believe how competitive she got over a board game.

“She cheated at Scrabble,” Pat said. “She absolutely cheated. She’d challenge you on a real word and then play something like ‘qat’ and swear up and down it was in the dictionary. Twice a year she’d come, and we’d order too much Chinese food and watch the worst television you have ever seen. Reality shows about people buying houses. She loved a bad house show.”

Sam sat in the audience and learned more about Leigh Gabler in four minutes than he had in fifteen years.

She cheated at Scrabble. She loved bad television. She had a best friend named Pat and a whole city and a family, and he hadn’t known about any of it.

Beside him, Alli listened, her eyes bright, and her hands folded tightly on her lap.

When it was Walter’s turn, he kept it short. He said Leigh had been the best of his late wife’s family and had become his own family, and that she had been a loving aunt to Hannah. He said Leigh had been a good friend, and that the house would be emptier for the loss of her twice-a-year visits, and then his voice went and he sat down, clearly grieving.

Afterward, in the receiving line, Sam asked if they might have a few minutes of his time. To talk properly. About Leigh.

If Walter was confused, he was too polite to say so.

“Of course. Come back to the house. We’re doing a small luncheon. It’s what she would have wanted, people in the kitchen eating too much.” He almost smiled. “Come. We’ll find a quiet minute.”

He gave them the address, and Sam made a note of it.

“We should not do this today,” Alli said quietly, in the car. “You know that, right? It’s his sister-in-law’s funeral. His wife’s been dead six months. Whatever we ask him, we’re asking a man on the worst kind of day.”

“I know.”

“And?”

“And we’re flying home tomorrow, and I don’t know when I’ll be standing in that man’s house again.” Sam looked out the window at the brick streets going by. “Piper made me promise. Quietly, but she made me promise. There could be a person, Alli. Thirty years old. Walking around. She’s family.”

Alli didn’t answer for a moment.

“Okay,” she said. “But gently. Please.”

“I will be, promise.”

The house was a tall brick townhouse just a few minutes away from the funeral home. Inside, people moved between rooms with a small plate in one hand and a drink glass in the other. There was a table full of food, ham and casseroles and a cake somebody had brought.

The home was warm and cozy, with touches of gold and blue here and there. Clearly, the family liked displaying photographs, as they were on almost every single wall.

Weddings, birthdays, graduations. A timeline of a happy and loving family. And Leigh was there, too, right along with them.

They found Hannah by the window in the front room, holding a cup of tea she wasn’t drinking, being brave at a rotation of elderly women. When she saw them, she looked almost relieved, someone her own generation, someone who didn’t need managing.

“You really came all the way from Illinois,” she said. “That’s amazing.”

“She was important to us,” Sam said. “But I’m realizing we didn’t know her as well as we should have after all of these years.”

“That was Aunt Leigh. She was like that. She’d turn up twice a year like a holiday, and she’d fix everything nobody else noticed was broken. She taught me to drive. My mom was too nervous, so Leigh did it one summer in an empty church parking lot.” Her eyes filled again, and she used the tissue in her hand to dab at them. “I keep thinking I have to call and tell her about the funeral. That’s the stupid part. She’s the person I’d call about something like this.”

“My dad said you wanted to talk to him about something. I think he’s in his study making a phone call. You can see him when he’s done. Let me check.”

Hannah was gone only a minute before she beckoned them to follow her down a hallway to the last door on the right.

The study was a small book-lined room with a desk and two chairs and a window onto a bare October garden. He looked up when they came in, and for a moment before he arranged his face, he looked simply tired to death. The recent events had taken their toll and then some.

“You wanted to talk,” Walter said. “Properly. About Leigh.”

“We did. We do.” Sam closed the door, which he saw Walter notice. “I’m going to show you something, and I’m going to ask you about it, and I’m sorry to do it today of all days. But I don’t have another day. We leave tomorrow morning.”