I FOUND MEGHAN SITTING on the couch upstairs. She had lifted Brodie onto the cushion next to her and was stroking the corgi's soft ears with one hand while she stared out at the occasional car going by on the street. A small fire crackled in the fireplace, and smoke from the well-seasoned apple wood faintly flavored the air.

"How's Erin?" I asked.

"She's asleep. She'll be okay. Just needs some time."

"Yeah. Us, too."

Meghan nodded.

"I was just over at Walter's" Wrapping the colorful paper strips around the bars of soap and affixing each with the appropriate label, I recounted my recent adventure across the alley. When I'd finished, I said, "I wish I knew what's going on."

She looked resigned, though to what I didn't know. She smoothed the fur down Brodie's back.

"He had a ton of money and he just gave it away. I don't think he spent any of it on himself. Could have bought himself a new truck, junked that old Scout. He babied that thing along for years," I said.

"Maybe giving the money away was his way of taking care of things, before he died. People who decide to kill themselves often give away their possessions as they get closer to doing it," she said.

"He seemed happy enough"

She shrugged. "I always got the impression Walter was a sad man. He smiled and carried on conversations, but he always seemed to bear an underlying, I don't know... sorrow, is the only word I can think of."

"Well, maybe you're more sensitive to that kind of thing than I am. I think he went through funks like anyone else. That's not enough to kill yourself over."

She gave me a look. "Is this really about Walter?"

"Of course it's about Walter."

"You told me once you never knew why Bobby Lee killed himself, that you couldn't understand it. And that really bothered you.

I picked at the edge of a label. Pieces of the handmade paper broke off, fluttered to the floor.

"He had a reason, he had to. I was at school, so I wasn't around. We talked on the phone some, but that's not the same thing. Mom and Dad didn't want to talk about what happened, though they seemed as bewildered as everyone else. But he was eighteen, and he'd certainly stopped confiding in my parents by then."

"Walter had a reason, too," Meghan said.

"What if he didn't do it?"

"What do you mean? Of course he did it. You saw him."

"But what if he didn't... kill himself?"

She stared at me. "You're kidding, right?"

"That peppermint I smelled in his kitchen. I smelled it downstairs today, too. So did you"

"So? Peppermint's in all sorts of things."

"I've never heard of peppermint-scented lye."

"Neither have I. But your workroom often smells like peppermint, and what you smelled at Walter's was probably tea or soap or air freshener. It could have been anything." "

I don't think so. It was too strong."

She shook her head, picked up a label and a bar of soap, then threw both of them back in the basket and sat back on the couch with her arms wrapped around herself as if she were cold. Neither of us said anything for several minutes.

Finally I spoke. "Even if he did kill himself, I'd like to know why."

"And you think finding out what made him do it will somehow change the fact that you don't know why your brother killed himself?"

"No-will you drop that? I told you, this has nothing to do with Bobby Lee. But doesn't it bother you that someone swallowed lye-lye, for G.o.d's sake-in our bas.e.m.e.nt? Don't you see how wrong that is? And now someone was in his house tonight. Do you think that was a coincidence? Something was going on with Walter, something pretty major. Something other than a bad case of the blues."

She turned to face me. "You were in his house tonight, too. And for a perfectly innocent reason. Whoever else was there could have just as valid an excuse. And even if they didn't, it's a bit of a leap to conclude it had something to do with his death. Don't make this into something it's not."

"I'm not making it into anything. It's already there. He died in your house. Don't you want to know why?"

She sighed. "Not the way you do."

"He tried to stop it, at the end. After it was too late."

"What?"

"The front of his shirt was all wet, and his cuffs. He'd tried to splash water in his mouth, drink it from his hands. That's why he died right in front of the sink."

She looked horrified. Swallowed audibly. "Maybe... maybe he didn't know it would hurt so much."

"I just..."

"I know."

"It's not about Bobby Lee."

"Okay."

We sat in silence, the scent of lavender doing nothing to smooth my nerves, the crackle of the fire offsetting the faint sound of the wind outside.

Meghan gathered Brodie into her arms and rose. "I'm going on up to bed."

"His mother lives at Caladia Acres," I said. "I'm going to go see her tomorrow morning about helping with the funeral. Want to come?"

"I can't. I'm booked solid all morning. But I guess I could try to fit in a phone call to the funeral home."

"Okay. Thanks."

Her small smile accentuated the dark circles under her eyes. "Sure." She turned toward the stair. "Goodnight, Sophie Mae."

I finished wrapping the lavender soap and started in on the citrus blend, relinquishing the idea of a movie. Soft sheets and my feather pillow beckoned. Forty minutes later, I lugged the basket down to my stockroom, then went straight up to my bedroom. I donned a pair of flannel pajamas and brushed my teeth in the hall bathroom.

Once snuggled under my down comforter, I worried that sleep would elude me, what with the image of Walter's dead face burned into my brain. But I was tired and beginning to drift-when I thought of something else. Getting out of my toasty bed, I put on a robe and a pair of tennis shoes and went back down to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Outside, the wind had died down and clouds blotted out the stars above. I made my way across the alley again to Walter's back door, hyperaware of every patter and rustle around me, jerking in alarm when a cat ran across the neighbor's yard. Lifting the flowerpot, I looked underneath. The key wasn't there.

I hadn't thought it would be.

SIX.

FRIDAY THE RAIN RETURNED. In the Pacific Northwest we have a continuum of terms describing the precipitation, from "misting" to "toad choker." The morning after Walter died, tiny droplets spit from on high seemed suspended in the air, unaffected by anything so mundane as gravity and giving the illusion that if I would just stop driving into them they wouldn't gather on my windshield. But the moisture collected at a high rate, requiring the steady swish of the wipers as I drove my little Toyota pickup north on Avenue D and took a right on Thirteenth. Caladia Acres sat at the north end of Pine, their land petering out into trees at the edge of town.

The closer I came to the nursing home, the more I wondered if I'd lost my mind. How could I have thought this would be a good idea? Okay, so I felt terrible about Walter, and I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to help, and if I could find out more about him, all the better. But what on earth would his grieving mother think? She had to be in her eighties or nineties-what if she wasn't all there? But the dread in my stomach came more from the fear that she was still perfectly sane and functioning. I don't like the idea that it's better to hide from the truth than to face into it, but I had to concede in this case ignorance might be bliss for a mother outliving her son.

I pulled into the small parking lot and turned off the engine. Drops, larger now, pattered against the windshield, gathering together in bleary runnels, blurring the long, low building ahead. I got out of my truck and walked up the curving sidewalk to the front door. A man stood under the shelter of the awning with his shoulders hunched; his frame seeming to have collapsed in on itself over the years. He wore a red-and-black quilted plaid shirt as a jacket over a green flannel shirt and black slacks. In the weatherinduced twilight, the skin on his bald pate shone dimly in the yellow illumination from the automatic porch light above the sliding gla.s.s door. Pungent smoke trailed up from the unfiltered Camel smoldering between the fingers of his left hand.

Greeting me cheerfully, he stepped on the pressure pad to open the door for me and waved me inside with a gallant gesture. I thanked him, braced myself, and entered the reception area.

I hate nursing homes. Not that anyone likes them, nor plans to end up in one. I'm not talking about senior apartments or even a.s.sisted living. I'm talking about nursing homes, where the care goes beyond "a.s.sisting" Even the best have about them an air of finality. This is the end of the line; for most there's only one way out. People change once they move in. Some of that change is because their world closes in around them, and some of it because they've already begun to change-that's why they come to live where they can receive around-the-clock care in the first place. Some of it has to do with a conglomeration of concepts like hope and indepen dence and connection and interests and purpose and self-respect that mingle together to create an alteration that goes beyond physical circ.u.mstance. It's like being forced to give up.

The scent of pine oil hit me as I walked to the front desk. Dinner-plate-sized dahlias were cl.u.s.tered in a huge vase on the deep-green Formica reception counter, towering over my head like a multi-colored tropical tree. The white-clad woman at the desk wore a name-tag that said her name was Ann, and she came around to take me to Mrs. Hanover herself.

"Tootie doesn't get a lot of visitors," she said.

"Tootie?"

"Her name's Petunia. Can you imagine naming a child that?"

I shook my head no.

"Well, she hates it, so she's been Tootie her whole life."

"She knows about her son?"

Ann nodded. "Such a shame. I'm not sure how surprised she is, though." Her bland face didn't reveal what she meant, and I didn't ask.

We went past a TV room where two women watched from wheelchairs and a man with sunken cheeks slumped in an armchair, asleep. Past an empty dining room, the tables covered with lightgreen cloths and set with white dishes and more dahlias, smaller ones, bunched in vases. Down a hallway, past murmuring sounds from open doorways: radios, televisions, conversations, and from one room soft snoring. Ann stopped before a half-open doorway near the end of the hall and motioned for me to wait. She slowly pushed the door inward, saying "Tootie?" in a quiet, quizzical voice.

The only light in the room came from the gray day outside the window. A tall but stooped silhouette leaned forward, right hand resting on something in front of her. The image of the bent form among the shadows in the half-light was spare, desolate, lonely as a scratchy record playing through tinny speakers at two a.m.

"Hon, there's someone here to see you. A friend of your son's."

The figure turned toward us. "Please, come in." The voice was deep. Strong.

Her arm moved and I heard a click and suddenly a lamp came on, dispelling the grays and shadows and replacing them with vibrant jewel tones. Two wingback chairs upholstered in gold and maroon sat opposite a daybed made up under a dark-blue coverlet with matching gold and maroon pillows plumped along the edges. As I stepped inside the room, my feet sank into a thick wool rug in the same colors. Ann stood aside as I walked past her.

"This is Sophie Mae Reynolds," she said.

"h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Hanover"

Walter's mother stood taller, pushing herself erect with a silver-headed cane. Her back rigid, she gestured me further into the room. Her black slacks would have been slinky on a younger woman, loose swinging fabric draping long legs, but on her they simply looked d.a.m.n good. Her silk tunic top in a deep plum color was well suited to the s.p.a.ce, another jewel in the setting. And above her patrician face, that lovely white braid swirled into a precise crown. I had expected a cranky old bat at best, a grief-stricken mess at worst, but not this.

No little knickknacks for Tootie Hanover, no porcelain figurines or collections of spoons or thimbles. Other than the sheer abundance of color and texture, the only decorative touches in the room were two oil paintings, both dark, broody landscapes, and a silver tea set on a cherrywood side table. The air carried a hint of jasmine perfume.

"At least sit down, Tootie," Ann admonished. "Have you taken your pill?"

Walter's mother ignored her. "Miss Reynolds, please. Have a seat."

I chose one of the wingbacks and found the seat hard as wood. As I watched Tootie ease herself into the other one, I realized a cushy chair would have been more difficult for her to rise from; she moved with caution, and the careful poker face almost covered the pain it cost her to move at all. Arthritis had caused my grandmother to move like that, hunched under the additional illusory weight of osteoporosis. In the photo with the Easter Bunny, Tootie Hanover had been in a wheelchair. This was one stubborn woman.

The nurse left. Tootie watched me with calm antic.i.p.ation. She inclined her head toward me a fraction.

"You were a friend of Walter's?" she asked.

Of course, that was when my inconvenient habit of becoming tongue-tied at the worst possible moment settled over me. My mind went blank and I tried to think what I could say to this woman who had just lost her son because he had gone into my bas.e.m.e.nt, swallowed a gla.s.sful of lye, and then made the futile attempt to undo that fatal swallow with water from the industrial sink he'd installed for me just months before.

"Miss Reynolds-or is it Mrs.?" she prompted.

"Sophie Mae," I said.

"And you must call me Tootie."

The name didn't fit her at all. "All right, Tootie. I, uh...Wal- ter and I were neighbors. He did some work for me and for my housemate Meghan, on occasion. Like he did for other people around town. In my mind we were friends. I'm so sorry for your loss." I hated the last words the second they flew out of my mouth, so trite and pat. But what else could I say? Sorry your son's dead? Sorry he did it at my house?

She considered me. "Thank you. But the way you put that'in your mind you were friends'-I get the feeling you're not sure Walter thought of you as a friend." "