It was some time before the door opened, but finally a wizened face with eyes the color of old chambray appeared through a narrow opening.

“Yes?” The voice was creaky with age and unmistakably wary.

“Are you Loretta Rawlings?”

“Who wants to know?”

“My name is Christine Ludlow, Mrs. Rawlings.” The name felt strange on her tongue, foreign after so many months as Christy-Lynn Parker. “My husband was Stephen Ludlow. Does that name mean anything to you?”

The door eased open another few inches. The old woman stood looking her over, heavily stooped at the waist and shoulders. “You’ve come then,” she said hoarsely. “I wondered if you would.”

“I’m not here to cause trouble, Mrs. Rawlings. I just . . . there are questions. About your granddaughter and my husband. I was hoping we could talk.”

The old woman glanced back over her shoulder, as if she might have something on the stove. Christy-Lynn tried to peer inside but could make out nothing beyond an old plaid couch and a floor lamp with a yellowed shade.

“Give me a minute, and I’ll be out.”

She closed the door then, leaving Christy-Lynn standing on the porch. Moments later, she returned with two glasses of lemonade. She wore a scruffy wool sweater despite the afternoon heat. “There,” she said, nodding toward a pair of plastic chairs. “We’ll sit there.” She handed Christy-Lynn a glass that was already beginning to sweat, then fumbled in the pocket of her housedress, eventually producing a soft pack of Basic Menthols and a disposable lighter.

She eased stiffly into one of the chairs, waiting until Christy-Lynn had taken the other to withdraw a cigarette from the pack and clamp it between her lips. Her hands, blue-veined and skeletal, trembled as she lit it. “Hope you don’t mind. I don’t smoke in the house anymore.”

“No. Not at all.”

Christy-Lynn studied the woman as she took that first long pull, her leathery cheeks caving in as she dragged in a lung full of smoke and then exhaled it with a faint rattle. It was impossible to guess her age. She was skin and bone, all joints and sinew, her skin the texture of old parchment. Somewhere in her eighties was probably a safe bet, though she could have been younger. Something told her life had been less than kind to Loretta Rawlings.

For a time, Christy-Lynn said nothing, balancing her untouched lemonade glass on her knee and wondering where to begin. In the end, it was Mrs. Rawlings who broke the silence.

“Ask what you came to ask,” she said in her flat, phlegmy voice. “I’ll do my best to answer.”

“I know how uncomfortable this must be for you, Mrs. Rawlings. It’s uncomfortable for me too. But there are things I feel I have a right to know, like the precise nature of your granddaughter’s relationship with my husband.”

Loretta Rawlings turned her head, her hazy eyes unsettlingly steady. “You don’t need to mince words, Mrs. Ludlow. I’ve been around a long time. Not much shocks me.”

Christy-Lynn nodded, wishing she could say the same. “All right then, was your granddaughter having an affair with my husband?”

Loretta took another long pull on her cigarette as she mulled the question. “I’d stopped thinking of it that way, but I suppose that’s what it was. No way around it really, since it was you wearing the wedding ring and not my Honey.”

The blunt answer left Christy-Lynn scrambling for a response. She had expected something else, a defense of her granddaughter’s behavior, excuses, justification. Instead, she had answered the question head-on. “Can you tell me how long they were . . . how long they knew each other?”

She seemed to give the question some thought, tracing a shaky finger around the rim of her glass. “I suppose it must be almost four years now. It was right after the book about the plane crash. Honey loved that book. When she heard they were making it into a movie, she convinced herself that if she could just meet the author she could talk him into giving her the part of Sandra. Used to walk around practicing her lines like she was moving to Hollywood any day.”

“Your granddaughter was an actress?”

Loretta smiled sadly. “My granddaughter was a dreamer, Mrs. Ludlow. And determined to get out of this town.” She turned her face away, her voice suddenly thick. “She got half her wish.”

Christy-Lynn squirmed as the moment stretched, sad and more than a little awkward. “I’m sorry you lost your granddaughter, Mrs. Rawlings.”

“No one calls me Mrs. Rawlings. Call me Rhetta. And thank you for that. It’s big of you to say after . . . everything. How did you find out?”

“I was asked to identify your granddaughter’s body at the morgue.”

Rhetta’s head snapped around, eyes flashing. “Bastards,” she growled, flicking her cigarette off the front porch and into the weeds.

“Yes.”

Silence descended again, a moment of shared anger punctuated by the dreary patter of drizzle. Rhetta fished out another cigarette, putting it to her lips with an unsteady hand. “The pictures were awful,” she said, staring out into the yard. “That’s how I found out she was dead. I was standing in line at the IGA, and there she was, splashed across the front page like one of those movie stars from the 1950s.”

Christy-Lynn silently cursed Daniel Connelly for his greed. “I’m so sorry,” she said softy, because she was. “I’d hoped you hadn’t seen them.”