"For his sake," June said, "I hope you're right."
"For my sake," Elias said, "I'm afraid I am."
That night, Elias couldn't sleep. He stood in the hallway outside the small guest room, listening to the deep, even breathing of a child who had finally β finally β felt safe enough to let go. He thought about Margaret, who had always said that love was not a feeling but a practice, like scales on a piano. And he thought about a copper ring, warm from a small thumb, engraved with a word he'd chosen himself when he was thirty and the world was simple.
In the morning, he told Ruth to buy school clothes. "And books," he added. "Whatever he wants. No β" he corrected himself, remembering June's warning about overwhelming the boy, "ask him what he wants. Let him choose."
Ruth smiled the smile of a woman watching a man learn something at sixty-eight that most people learned at twenty. "Yes, Mr. Thorn," she said. "I'll ask him."
Chapter 6
The Copper Band
Vera Sloane had been finding things for Elias Thorn for twelve years β embezzlers, runaway debtors, a vice president's second family in San Diego β and she had a rule: no miracles promised, no timelines given, no questions asked about why. She broke the third rule within five minutes of sitting down in Elias's study on Monday morning.
"Why?" she asked, setting her notebook on her knee. "Twelve years, Elias, you've never asked me to find a dead woman."
"She might not be dead," Elias said, then corrected himself. "She is dead. The boy's mother died last winter. I need to know if the dead woman was my sister."
He told her everything: the gala, the ring, the engraving. Vera listened the way she always listened β utterly still, eyes half-closed, like a cat deciding whether to pounce.
"And the ring itself?" she asked. "Have you had it examined? Copper bands with engraving β a jeweler can tell you the age of the piece, the style of the engraving, whether the wear patterns match the story."
"He won't take it off," Elias said. "He sleeps with it in his fist. June Park would have my head if I tried."
"Then we do it without the ring," Vera said. "Death records for Lydia Reyes, Marrow Bay, last winter. Hospital records. And I'll pull your sister's file β the one from 2004, the investigator's reports. If Lydia Thorn became Lydia Reyes somewhere between Seattle and Portland, there'll be a paper trail. People don't vanish anymore, Elias. Not even in 2004, not completely."
She left with a retainer check and a look that said she thought he was chasing a ghost. Elias sat alone in the study for a long time, turning his mother's β no, the β ring over in his mind. He could picture it exactly: the copper gone dark with age, the inside worn smooth, the words Lydia β always in the looping script of old man Harlow, the jeweler on Main Street who had died in 1995.
He remembered the day as if it were yesterday and not thirty-eight years ago. Lydia, eighteen, all elbows and laughter, dragging him into Harlow's shop. Eleanor, their mother, pressing the ring into the girl's palm and saying, "Copper for a working girl. Gold is for showing off; copper is for keeping." And Lydia, solemn for once, slipping it on and saying, "I'll never take it off, Mama. Always."
Always. Elias had chosen the word for the engraving. Harlow had raised an eyebrow at the sentimentality. Elias hadn't cared.
The phone rang. Ruth, from the kitchen: "Mr. Thorn? It's the school β no, it's June Park. She says the home visit is Thursday and Milo's asking if he can β" She paused, listening. "He wants to know if the pancakes are every Sunday or just this one."
Elias felt something crack open in his chest. "Tell him every Sunday," he said. "Tell him that's house law."
That afternoon, he did something he hadn't done in twenty-two years: he opened the bottom drawer of his desk, the one he never opened, and took out the manila folder Lydia had thrust at him in the parking lot in 2004. He'd kept it. He'd told himself he'd kept it for the lawyers, but the truth β the truth he could finally say aloud in the empty study β was that he'd kept it because throwing it away would have meant admitting he'd never looked.
He looked now.
Page six. Disbursements to the Harlow Street property. Page nine. Consulting fees to a dissolved company. Lydia's handwriting in the margins, furious and precise: VACANT LOT β I checked. DISSOLVED 2001 β I checked. Elias felt the floor tilt. He'd told himself, for twenty-two years, that the papers he'd signed were a formality. He'd told himself Preston was protecting Lydia from herself.
He picked up the phone and called his accountant, a meticulous man named David Okafor β Ruth's nephew, as it happened. "David," Elias said, "I need you to pull the 2004 trust records. Lydia's trust. All of them. And I need you to do it quietly."
"Elias," David said carefully, "those records are twenty-two years old. The trust was dissolvedβ"
"I know what it was. Pull them."
He hung up and sat staring at Lydia's folder until the light went gray. In the garden below, Milo was teaching Ruth's ancient terrier to catch blueberries. The dog was terrible at it. Milo was delighted anyway.
Elias thought about the word always, worn smooth inside a copper band. He thought about a girl of eighteen who had promised her mother, and a brother of forty-six who had broken every promise he'd ever made her. He thought about a boy under a pier, guarding a ring like a small bird.
"I'm going to fix this, Lydia," he whispered to the empty study. "Whatever it costs. Whatever's left of me. I'm going to fix it."
He didn't go to bed. Instead, he climbed the narrow stairs to the attic β a place he hadn't entered since Margaret died β and pulled the chain on the bare bulb. In the corner, under a sheet, stood a trunk with Lydia's name on the side.
His hands shook as he worked the latch.