A MAFIA BOSS PAID $90,000 TO SAVE A HOMELESS WOMAN THEN SHE SPOKE OF HER MOTHER’S RING AND THE FIRE TEN YEARS AGO

When Adrian arrived at the apartment the next morning, Wren was already sitting in the hallway. She had her borrowed clothes packed into the plastic shopping bag she'd brought from the clinic. The brass bell rested in her palm.

"I was going to knock," he said.

"I know. I heard you on the stairs."

His bandage was new, and moving was obviously painful. A hospital bracelet peeked from his cuff. Wren watched him climb the last few steps, then looked away before concern could show.

"Your man talked to Jo."

Adrian stopped. Marco, behind him, looked toward the floor.

"I told him to find out where you'd been," Adrian said. "I shouldn't have."

"What else?"

"Nothing useful. He didn't get your records."

"Useful to who?"

Adrian didn't answer quickly enough. Wren nodded as if she'd heard exactly what she expected and started down the stairs.

"Wait," he said. "There was a woman I knew. Ten years ago. She had a daughter who disappeared in a fire. What you said about the ring—"

"People have rings," Wren said without turning.

"She wore one made from two bands twisted together. A tiny blue stone set on the inside, where nobody would see it."

Wren stopped on the third step. Her fingers opened. The bell fell, struck the stair, and made a hollow click despite its missing clapper.

Adrian waited.

"Blue," she said at last. "No. Green. I don't know."

"I wasn't asking you to prove anything."

"Yes, you were."

She climbed back up, brushing past Marco, and went into the apartment. Adrian followed only after she held the door open for him. They stood on opposite sides of the little kitchen table.

"Her name was Celia Vale," he said. "She used to run an arts center in Greenpoint. She'd take in teenagers who'd quit school, kids whose families had run out of patience. I spent a lot of time there."

"Doing what?"

"Mostly lying about why I needed a place to sit. Sometimes fixing things."

That brought the faintest change to her expression.

"Celia had a daughter named Iris," he continued. "She was eighteen when the fire happened. Celia died from smoke inhalation. They never found Iris. The building had collapsed in part, and the records from that night were a mess. There was no confirmed identification."

Wren stared at a chip in the tabletop. "Iris."

"Does it mean anything?"

"It sounds like a flower."

"It is a flower."

"I know that."

He nearly smiled, then stopped himself.

"Did you look for her?" Wren asked.

"Yes. At first. I had money and contacts and I thought that was enough. I paid people who claimed they'd seen her. One sent me photographs of a stranger in Connecticut. Another wanted a car. I stopped believing the tips."

"You stopped looking."

"Not entirely."

"That's how people say yes when they don't like the word."

He settled into the chair because his ribs were beginning to shake with the effort of standing. "I stopped looking the way I should have."

"Why did she matter to you?"

Adrian looked toward the narrow window and the laundromat sign across the street. "Celia let me sleep above her workshop when I needed somewhere nobody asked what I'd done. She knew enough. She still left soup outside the door. She talked to me like there was a version of my life I hadn't ruined yet."

Wren rubbed the mark the bell's cord had left on her wrist. "And Iris?"

"She was always asking questions. Loud ones. About why people said 'resources' when they meant money. About why grown men were afraid to tell her mother the truth. She played violin badly and refused to admit it."

Wren made a short sound. "Was she your girlfriend?"

"No. I was twenty-six. She was eighteen. I was too busy being impressed with myself."

A pause.

"She disliked me," he added. "With good reason."

"You sound like you liked her."

"I liked that she told me when I was being a jerk. Nobody else did anymore."

Adrian asked if she wanted to see an old photograph. Wren said no. He accepted it, which seemed to irritate her more than if he'd insisted.

"What happened in the fire?" she asked.

He folded his hands. "I don't know everything. The city report blamed electrical wiring in a rehearsal room. Celia's center was renting that floor from an old warehouse owner. The building had passed some inspections, not others. There were seventeen people inside. Fifteen got out alive. Celia died. Iris went missing."

"Only one body."

"One confirmed death."

"So she might've run."

"Yes."

Wren stood so abruptly the chair legs scraped. "Then why didn't she call somebody?"

"I don't know."

"Why wouldn't she call her family?"

"I don't know."

"Then maybe she didn't have a family worth calling."

The words were sharp enough to hurt them both. Adrian let them stand.

The next hour was uncomfortable and ordinary. Marco came up with bags of groceries and announced he'd bought too many eggs. Wren told him he could take half home. Adrian tried to open a carton, caught his bandaged side on the table, and knocked three eggs to the floor. Marco swore. Wren took the dish towel from his hand.

"Move," she said. "You're both making it worse."

She knelt to gather the shells and, without thinking, began humming three notes under her breath. Adrian recognized the melody before he understood why. It was an old tune Celia used to play at closing time, to tell the kids to put the chairs up.

"Where did you learn that?" he asked.

Wren stopped humming.

"Learn what?"

He repeated the three notes badly. She shook her head.

"That's not how it goes."

Then she sang the ending—two soft notes dropping lower, followed by a little pause. The exact ending Celia invented because she said the original song sounded too cheerful to send anyone home.

Adrian's mouth went dry.

"I don't remember learning it," Wren said. "It just comes out sometimes."

He could have told her the name he'd heard in that tune. Instead he reached for a paper towel and helped clean the ruined eggs.

When Marco finally left, Wren pointed at Adrian's coat.

"Is there a picture in there?"

"Yes."

"I didn't say I wanted to see it."

"I know."

She sat down at the table, hands flat. "Show me."

Adrian took a creased photograph from his wallet. Celia Vale stood beneath a painted sign with her arm around a girl of eighteen, all elbows and dark hair, smiling with a crooked front tooth. At the bottom someone had written Last opening night. Don't look at the mess behind us.