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recently he’d found out he had a child, because this secret had been kept even from me. Or, as my family likes to say, they’d carefully protected me from this knowledge.
    If I’m honest with myself, me finding out about it certainly had a lot to do with our final breakup, at least from my end. That really put the bow on it.
    I stood now on the corner by Holy Child Church. My marriage had fizzled, we know my relationship had fizzled, and if I moved, my cell phone fizzled.
    â€œClaire!” Carmela spoke with harsh, attention-getting spleen. “Listen carefully. I’m outside Rome.”
    I looked down at the soggy, elegant pumps I’d “borrowed” from her while she’d be gone and was still wearing and had better be careful of. I wiped their soles on the wrought-iron gate.
    â€œAnd now,” she went on, “I got a message on my cell that Jenny Rose is in New York.”
    â€œJenny Rose? Your daughter?”
    â€œStop saying my ‘daughter!’ I don’t even know her!”
    â€œWell, now’s your chance,” I muttered.
    â€œClaire, those aunties made me swear on the Bible I’d have nothing to do with her when I let them have her.” Carmela lowered her voice. “You know they wouldn’t have taken her if I was going to waltz back into her life. I had no choice, for God’s sake! Claire. Just listen. She’s left the name of a place. I’ve written it out. Take it down before I lose you. Can’t you just go find her? She’s on Long Island somewhere. It’s some artist colony … used to be a posh resort town on the North Shore. What the hell’s the name of the place? Hold on. Here it is. Sea Cliff.”
    Sea Cliff. The way Carmela said it, with that Ida Lupino English lisp of hers, it made it sound so alluring. The very name made me think of sailing boats and high winds.
    â€œShe says she’s working as an au pair. Look”—she sounded a touch frantic now and I pictured a handsome Italian coming within earshot—“she wants me to meet her out there at noon tomorrow, at a place called Once Upon a Moose. I couldn’t make out her number for all the dead spots in the call and so I can’t call her back. Can you go?”
    â€œJesus, Carmela, she’ll be expecting you !”
    â€œWell, I can’t very well fly home in time, can I?” she shouted, then reasoned, “Look. She met you the time you went to Ireland for that funeral years ago. Can’t you do this one little thing for me so she doesn’t sit there looking at the door and no one comes?”
    I could see the logic in this. Of course I’d met the girl. She was just a kid. Cute. But also very clearly a handful. I was actually glad Carmela showed some signs of feeling for her daughter, but I could already imagine the look of disappointment that would cross her face when she saw me instead of Carmela.
    â€œYou and Enoch could take a ride out,” she suggested, already triumphant.
    So I laughed. What else could I do?
    Jenny Rose
    In the morning, Jenny Rose felt stronger. She’d slept well, despite the stuffy, claustrophobic space. It was new and clean enough, but whoever had designed the basement must have been a stranger to the rest of the house. She showered gingerly in the convenient pink washroom allotted to her and while she stood there dressing, her eyes fell upon the twin jewels. She’d best keep them safe. She did have a little green satin sack in the music box in which she kept a tiny pearl she’d bit into while eating clams in Ephesus. She took the music box out of the underwear drawer, opened it, and wound it. When it didn’t stick, it played the haunting “Waltz of the Flowers.” It hurt her just to hear it because the boy who’d broken her heart had given it to her. She should have gotten rid of it. But it was so old-fashioned and expensive looking … And she wasn’t