Look Closely by Laura Caldwell

I had my own family to take care of. Max was twelve and Delphine ten. My husband said I had to get over it. I had to get over Leah’s death and get a new job.”
    “And did you?”
    “Oh, I got other jobs, although never as a housekeeper or a nanny again. I cleaned office buildings for a janitorial service, and I cooked meals for the sick.” Del a tsked, as if none of that had mattered much. “I never got over Leah.”
    “You two were close,” I said. An image drifted back of my mom and Del a in the kitchen, sun slanting through the high window over the sink, the two of them laughing as they washed dishes. It seemed to me now that my mother probably kept Del a around as much for her company as her housekeeping skil s. I couldn’t remember my mom having any other close friends.
    “She was a wonderful woman.” Del a’s voice was softer now. “A good friend. And I miss her every day.”
    I stayed silent, and tilted my head up for a moment, watching a squirrel above me racing from branch to branch. I had missed my mom every day, too, but not in the same way. I longed for the vague concept of my mother, of a mother in my life. I missed her especial y when I was learning about boys, shopping for prom dresses, graduating from col ege, from law school.
    I had my dad for al those things, and he tried to be everything— father, mother, friend—but sometimes I craved female guidance and companionship. My friendship with Maddy had fil ed some of that void, yet no one could total y replace a mother.
    “Howdidshedie?”ItwasthequestionIcameto ask, the one that had been haunting me since I read that letter, but I hadn’t meant to say it so abruptly.
    Del asatstraighterinherchair,thenraisedahand toherlips.Sheliftedhershoulders,thenletthemfal again. “It’s hard to say. What do you remember?”
    I pushed my mind back to that time when I was seven years old. I remember not needing to ask the question of how she had died, as if I had known the answer and didn’t want to be reminded. But somewhere along the way, I lost the knowledge.
    “I don’t real y remember anything specific,” I said. “That’s the problem. And I need to know.”
    Del a pushed her plate away and leaned on the table. “Do you remember talking to the police?”
    I felt a strange pulse beating in my neck. “The police? I talked to the police?”
    “We al did.”
    I tried to conjure up some sense of my seven-year-old self, in a police station, sitting across from a detective, swinging my legs underneath the table. “I don’t remember.”
    “Wel , they never made any decisions. They never drew any conclusions. Just looked into her death and closed the file. It got people to talking, though.”
    “I remember the whispering and the looks,” I said, slightly agitated now that I was getting close to the topic, yet not learning anything. “But why did the police look into it?”
    A gust of wind blew through the backyard, pushing Del a’s hair into her face. She brushed it away; she sighed loud enough that I heard it over the breeze. “Oh, sweetie, your mother died from a blow to the head. They wanted to find out if someone had done that to her on purpose.”
    5
    I checked into the Long Beach Inn, an aptly named bed-and-breakfast perched above a lengthy stretch of tawny sand that hemmed Lake Michigan. Because the summer season hadn’t yet started, I was able to get an upstairs room. It was the largest one, I’d been told by the housekeeper, who was fil ing in for the owner. The room took up half the third floor, a sunny space painted white, like a summer cottage. A large canopy bed covered in pil ows sat in the center. The French doors on the other side led to a balcony and, beyond that, the beach. I had always dreamed of a balcony off my bedroom overlooking the water, but I was too preoccupied now to enjoy it.
    I unpacked the way I always did in hotels. I traveled so often that I liked to try to create a semblance of home for myself, even if it was