The front door banged then — Sofia, who had a key and no sense of ceremony, coming in with a bag of pastries from the bakery on Broadway and a grin that took in the room in one sweep.
"She told you," Sofia said to Emily, dropping the bag on the counter. "Good. I was going to tell you myself if she didn't, because you were walking around the dining room tonight like somebody'd set your apron on fire."
"Subtle," Emily said.
"Never claimed to be." Sofia hugged Agnes, kissed her cheek, and turned to Emily. "You don't owe this woman anything. Not a meeting, not a feeling, not a minute of your shift. But you looked tonight like you'd seen a ghost, and ghosts don't go away because you pretend the hallway's empty. Hear her out, say thank you, and be done."
Agnes nodded at Sofia like a judge concurring. Emily looked from one to the other and felt, suddenly, the way she had at twelve when they'd sat her down to explain that Father Byrne's orphanage had kept records and hers were the thinnest of anyone's — a date, a blanket, a door.
"Fine," she said. "I'll hear her out."
"That's my girl," Agnes said.
But Emily went upstairs to her room and sat on the bed and looked at her left wrist for a long time. The mark was there as always, reddish-brown at the edges, darker at the center, the size of a coin. She'd stopped wanting it to be anything years ago. It was just skin. It was just her.
She picked up her phone and typed the number from the card. She deleted it. She typed it again and pressed call before she could delete it a third time, and when a woman's voice answered — careful, breathless — Emily said, "This is Emily Carter. From the restaurant." And then, because Agnes had raised her and Sofia had steadied her and she was, at the bottom of everything, tired of the hallway being haunted: "I'll listen. But that's all I'm promising."
Chapter 6: Ninety-Nine Point Nine Nine
The lab was on the third floor of a brick building on Longwood Avenue, the kind of place that could have been a dentist's office. Dr. Alan Weiss had the tired, precise manner of a man who had delivered ten thousand verdicts and remembered none of them. He explained the swabs — inside of the cheek, thirty seconds, don't eat for an hour before — and Eleanor sat in the plastic chair beside Emily and tried not to look at her, and Emily tried not to look at the woman's hands, which were folded so tightly the knuckles had gone white.
"It takes five to seven business days," Weiss said, sealing the two vials into a bag.
They rode the elevator down in silence. In the lobby, Eleanor said, "Would you like coffee," and Emily said, "I have a shift," and Eleanor nodded.
The waiting was the worst of it. Emily worked doubles all week — lunch into dinner, the dining room at Maison Laurent tilting through its rhythms, the regulars, the tourists, the couple from Ohio who asked what coq au vin was and then ordered it anyway. She carried trays and cleared tables and smiled, and every hour or so she would catch herself touching her left wrist with her right thumb, pressing the mark through her sleeve like checking a pulse.
On Thursday, in the locker room, Sofia said, "You're allowed to be scared, you know."
"I'm not scared. I'm busy."
"You're swabbing your cheek with your tongue right now."
Emily stopped. "Don't psychoanalyze me between shifts."
"Somebody has to. You won't." Sofia zipped her bag and slung it over her shoulder. "For what it's worth, I hope it's true."
"You what?"
"I hope it's true." Sofia looked at her levelly. "Not because she's rich. Because then somebody didn't throw you away, Em. Because then there was a fire and a mess and you were lost, not left. There's a difference, and you know it."
Emily didn't answer. She went back out to the floor with three plates balanced up her arm and the difference sitting in her chest like a swallowed stone.
* * *
Eleanor did not sleep. She told herself it was the house — the Beacon Hill townhouse with its old bones, the radiators ticking — but it was not the house. She'd been rehearsing every version of the phone call: the lab saying no, the lab saying yes, the lab saying the sample was insufficient. Richard slept beside her, or performed sleep; in twenty-three years she had learned to tell the difference, and his breathing now was the wrong rhythm, shallow and alert. They had not spoken of Emily since the night Eleanor had come home from the restaurant and told him.
On the sixth day she walked the length of Newbury Street and back, twice, in the rain. On the seventh day the phone rang at 4:12 in the afternoon and she answered it before the second ring, and Dr. Weiss's voice said, "Mrs. Whitmore. The results are in."
She asked him to say it twice. Then she sat down on the stairs, in the middle of the staircase, in her coat, and held the locket in her fist and wept without making a sound.
* * *
They met at a coffee shop in the South End, neutral ground, because Emily had said she wouldn't come to Beacon Hill and Eleanor had understood without needing it explained. Eleanor arrived first and chose a table in the corner and ordered nothing, and when Emily came in — hair damp from the walk, apron nowhere in sight — Eleanor stood up too fast and knocked her bag against the chair.
Dr. Weiss had given them each a copy. Eleanor had hers in her purse and did not take it out. Emily set hers on the table between them, the envelope already opened, the letter unfolded and refolded until the creases were soft.
"Ninety-nine point nine nine," Emily said.