"Ah, yes? What can I do for you?" he asked me, his voice coming from a great interior distance.

"I've come to clean your house."

"What?"

"That's what I do for a living, clean. This is what I can offer you in your time of trouble."

He was still bewildered. I was unhappy with myself, so it was more difficult to keep my impatience under wraps.

"My sister..." he faltered. "She'll be coming tomorrow."

"Then you need the house clean for her arrival."

He stared some more. I stared right back. Behind him, down a dark hall, I saw Eve creep out of an open doorway. She looked like a little ghost of herself.

"Miss Lily," she said. "Thanks for coming."

It was what she'd heard her father say to callers all day, and her attempt to be adult gave my heart a little pang. I also wondered what Eve was doing at home, when I'd thought she was with the O'Sheas.

Emory finally stood aside so I could enter, but he still seemed uncertain. I glanced at my watch, letting him know how valuable I thought my time was, and that shook him from his lethargy.

"This is so kind of you, Miss ... Bard," he said. "Is there anything we need to ... ?"

"I expect Eve can show me where things are." I am no grief counselor. I don't know squat about children. But it's always better to be busy.

"That would be good," Emory said vaguely. "So I'll..." and he just wandered off. "Oh, Eve," he said over his shoulder, "remember your company manners. Stay with Miss Bard."

Eve looked a little resentful, but she replied, "Yes, Daddy."

The girl and I looked at each other carefully. "Where's the baby?" I asked.

"She's at the O'Sheas' house. I was there for a while, too, but Daddy said I needed to come home."

"All right, then. Where is the kitchen?"

Her lips curved in an incredulous smile. Surely everyone knew where the kitchen was! But Eve was polite, and she guided me to the back of the house and to the right.

"Where's all the cleaning stuff?" I asked. I set my purse down on the kitchen counter, shrugged off my coat, and hung it on one of the kitchen chairs.

Eve opened a cupboard in the adjacent washroom. I could see that the laundry basket was full of clothes.

"Maybe you better show me the house before I start."

So the little girl showed me her home. It was a large older house, with high ceilings and dark hardwood paneling and floors that needed work. I noticed the register of a floor furnace. I hadn't seen one of those in years. A Christmas tree decorated with religious symbols stood in the living room, the family's only communal room. The sofa, coffee table, and chair combo was maple with upholstery of a muted brown plaid. Clean but hideous.

Emory was slumped in the chair, his hand wrapped around a cold mug that had held coffee. I knew it was cold because I could see the ring around the middle. He'd had a drink after it had been sitting a spell. He didn't acknowledge our pa.s.sage through the room. I wondered if I'd have to dust him like a piece of furniture.

The master bedroom was tidy, but the furniture needed polishing. Eve's room ... well, her bed had been made haphazardly, but the floor was littered with Barbies and coloring books. The baby's room was neatest, since the baby couldn't walk yet. The diaper pail needed emptying. The bathroom needed a complete scrubbing. The kitchen was not too bad.

"Where are the sheets?" I asked.

Eve said, "Mama's are in there." She pointed to the double closet in the master bedroom.

I stripped down the double bed, carried the dirty sheets to the washroom, started a load of wash. Back in the bedroom, I opened the closet door.

"There's Mama's stool," Eve said helpfully. "She always needs it to get things down from the closet shelf."

I was at least six inches taller than Meredith Osborn had been, and I could easily reach the shelf. But if I wanted to look at what was behind the sheets, the stool would be handy.

I stepped up, lifted the set of sheets, and scanned the contents of the closet shelf. Another blanket for the bed, a box marked "Shoe Polish," a cheap metal box for files and important papers. Then, under a pile of purses, I spotted a box marked "Eve." After I'd snapped the clean sheets on the bed, I sent Eve out of the room to fetch a dustcloth and the furniture polish.

I lifted down the box and opened it. I had to clench my teeth to make myself examine its contents. My sense of invasion was overwhelming.

In the box were faded "Welcome, Baby" cards, the kind family and friends send a couple when they have a child. I quickly riffled through them. They were only what they seemed. Also in the box was a little rattle and a baby outfit. It was soft knit, yellow, with little green giraffes scattered over it, the usual snap crotch and long sleeves. It had been folded carefully. Eve's coming home from the hospital outfit, maybe. But Eve had been born at home, I remembered. Well, then, Meredith's favorite of all Eve's baby clothes. My mother had some of mine and Varena's still packed away in our attic.

I closed the box and popped it back into position. By the time Eve returned, I had the flowered bedspread smoothed flat and taut across the bed and the blanket folded at the foot.

Together, we polished and dusted. Eve naturally didn't do things the most efficient way, since she was a grieving eight-year-old child. I am rigid about the way I like housework done and not used to working with anyone, but I managed it.

I'd had a pang of worry about Eve handling her mother's belongings, but Eve seemed to do that so matter-of-factly that I wondered if she didn't yet comprehend that her mother would not be returning.

In the course of cleaning that room I made sure I examined every nook and cranny. Short of going through the chest of drawers and the drawers in the night tables, I saw what there was to see in that bedroom: under the bed, the corners of the closet, the backs and bottoms of almost every single piece of furniture. Later, when I began to put the laundry away, I even caught glimpses of what was in the drawers. Just the usual stuff, as far as I could tell.

One drawer of the little desk in the corner was stacked with medical bills related to Meredith's pregnancy. At a glance, it had been a difficult one. I hoped the furniture store had a group policy.

"Shake the can, Eve," I reminded her, and she shook the yellow aerosol can of furniture polish. "Now, spray."

She carefully sent a stream of polish onto the bare top of the desk. I swabbed with a cloth, over and over, then put the letter rack, mug full of pens and pencils, and box containing stamps and return address labels back in their former positions. When Eve excused herself to use the bathroom, I gritted my teeth and did something that disgusted me: I picked up Meredith Osborn's hairbrush, which could reasonably be a.s.sumed to have her fingerprints on it, wrapped it in a discarded plastic cleaner's bag, and stepped through to the kitchen and shoved it in my purse.

I was back in the Osborns' bedroom, tamping the stack of papers so the edges were square and neat, when Eve came back.

"Those are Mama's bills," she said importantly. "We always pay our bills."

"Of course." I gathered the cleaning things and handed some of them to Eve. "We've finished here."

As we began to work on Eve's room, I could tell that the little girl was getting bored, after the novelty of helping me work wore thin.

"Where'd you eat last night?" I asked casually.

"We went to the restaurant," she said. "I got a milkshake. Jane slept the whole time. It was great."

"Your dad was with you," I observed.

"Yeah, he wanted to give Mama a night off," Eve said approvingly. Then the ending of that night off hit her in the face, and I saw her pleasure in the little memory of the milkshake crumple. I could not ask her any more questions about last night.

"Why don't you find your last school memory book and show me who your friends are?" I suggested, as I got her clean sheets out of her little closet and began to remake her single bed.

"Oh, sure!" Eve said enthusiastically. She began to rummage through the low bookcase that was filled with children's books and knickknacks. Nothing in the bookcase seemed to be in any particular order, and I wasn't too surprised when Eve told me she couldn't come up with her most recent memory book. She fetched one from two years ago instead and had an excellent time telling me the name of every child in every picture. I was required only to smile and nod, and every now and then I said, "Really?" As casually as I could manage it, I went through the books in the bookcase myself. The past year's memory book wasn't there.

Eve relaxed perceptibly as she looked at the pictures of her friends and acquaintances.

"Did you go to the doctor last week, Eve?" I asked casually.

"Why do you want to know that?" she asked.

I was floored. It hadn't occurred to me that a child would ask me why I wanted to know.

"I just wondered what doctor you went to."

"Doctor LeMay." Her brown eyes looked huge as she thought about her answer. "He's dead, too," she said wearily, as if the whole world was dying around her. To Eve, it must have felt so.

I could not think of a natural, painless way to ask again, and I just couldn't put the girl through any more grief. To my surprise, Eve volunteered, "Mama went with me."

"She did?" I tried to keep my voice as noncommittal as possible.

"Yep. She liked Dr. LeMay, Miss Binnie, too."

I nodded, lifting a stack of coloring books and shaking them into an orderly rectangle.

"It hurt, but it was over before too long," Eve said, obviously quoting someone.

"What was over?" I asked.

"They took my blood," Eve said importantly.

"Yuck."

"Yeah, it hurt," said the girl, shaking her head just like a middle-aged woman, philosophically. "But some things hurt, and you just gotta handle it."

I nodded. This was a lot of stoical philosophy from a third grader.

"I was losing weight, and my mama thought something might be wrong," Eve explained.

"So, what was wrong?"

"I don't know." Eve looked down at her feet. "She never said."

I nodded as if that were quite usual. But what Eve had told me worried me, worried me badly. What if something really was wrong physically with the child? Surely her father knew about it, about the visit and the blood test? What if Eve were anemic or had some worse disease?

She looked healthy enough to me, but I was certainly willing to concede that I was hardly a competent judge. Eve was thin and pale, yes, but not abnormally so. Her hair shone and her teeth looked sound and clean, she smelled good and she stood like she was comfortable, and she was able to meet my eyes: The absence of any of these conditions is reason to worry, their presence rea.s.suring. So why wasn't I relaxing?

We moved on to the baby's room, Eve shadowing my every step. From time to time the doorbell rang, and I would hear Emory drift through the house to answer it, but the callers never stayed long. Faced with Emory's naked grief, it would be hard to stand and chat.

After I'd finished the baby's room and the bathroom, I entered the kitchen to find that food was acc.u.mulating faster than Emory could store it. He was standing there with a plastic bowl in his hands, a bowl wrapped in the rose-colored plastic wrap that was so popular locally. I opened the refrigerator and evaluated the situation.

"Hmmm," I said. I began removing everything. Emory put the bowl down and helped. All the little odds and ends of leftovers went into the garbage, the dishes they'd been in went in the sink, and I wiped down the bottom shelf where there'd been a little spillage.

"Do you have a list?" I asked Emory.

He seemed to come out of his trance. "A list?" he asked, as if he'd never heard the word.

"You need to keep a list of who brings what food in what dish. Do you have a piece of paper handy?" That sister of Emory's needed to get here fast.

"Daddy, I've got notebook paper in my room!" Eve said and ran off to fetch it.

"I guess I knew that, but I forgot," Emory said. He blinked his red eyes, seemed to wake up a little. When Eve dashed into the kitchen with several sheets of paper, he hugged her. She wriggled in his grasp.

"We have to start the list, Daddy!" She looked up at him sternly.

I thought that Eve had probably been hugged and patted enough for two lifetimes in the day just past.

She began the list herself, in shaky and idiosyncratic writing. I told her how to do it, and she perched on a stool at the counter, laboriously entering the food gifts on one side, the bringer on the other, and a star when there was a dish that had to be returned.

Galvanized by our activity, Emory began making calls from the telephone on the kitchen counter. I gathered from the s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation I overheard that he was calling the police department to find out when they thought Meredith's body could come back from its autopsy in Little Rock, making arrangements for the music at the funeral service, checking in at work, trying to start his life back into motion. He began writing his own list, in tiny, illegible writing. It was a list of things to do before the funeral, he told me in his quiet voice. I was glad to see him shake off his torpor.

It was getting late so I accelerated my work rate, sweeping and mopping and wiping down the kitchen counters with dispatch. I selected a few dishes for Emory and Eve's supper, leaving them on the counter with heating instructions. Emory was still talking on the phone, so I just drifted out of the room with Eve behind me. I pulled on my coat, pulled up the strap of the purse.

"Can you come back, Lily?" Eve asked. "You know how to do everything."

I looked down at her. I was betraying this child and her father, abusing their trust. Eve's admiration for me was painful.

"I can't come back tomorrow, no," I said as gently as I was capable of. "Varena's getting married the day after, and I still have a lot to do for that. But I'll try to see you again."

"OK." She took that in a soldierlike way, which I was beginning to understand was typical of Eve Osborn. "And thank you for helping today," Eve said, after a couple of gulps. Very much woman of the house.

"I figured cleaning would be more use than more food."

"You were right," she said soberly. "The house looks so much nicer."

"See ya," I said. I bent to give her a little hug. I felt awkward. "Take care of yourself." What a stupid thing to tell a child, I castigated myself, but I had no idea what else to say.

Emory was standing by the front door. I felt like snarling. I had almost made it out without talking to him. "I can't thank you enough for this," he said, his sincerity painful and unwelcome.

"It was nothing."

"No, no," he insisted. "It meant so much to us." He was going to cry again.

Oh, h.e.l.l. "Good-bye," I told him firmly and was out the door.

Glancing down at my watch again as I walked out to my car, I realized there was no way to get out of explaining to my folks where I'd been and what I'd been doing.

To compound my guilt, my parents thought I'd done a wonderful Christian thing, helping out Emory Osborn in his hour of travail. I had to let them think the best of me when I least deserved it.

I tried hard to pack my guilt into a smaller s.p.a.ce in my heart. Reduced to the most basic terms, the Osborns now had a clean house in which to receive visitors. And I had a negative report for Jack. I hadn't discovered anything of note, except for Eve's trip to the doctor. Though I had stolen the brush.

When Varena emerged from her room, looking almost as weepy as Emory, I put the second part of my plan into effect.

"I'm in the cleaning mood," I told her. "How about me cleaning Dill's house, so it'll be nice for your first Christmas together?" Varena and Dill weren't leaving for their honeymoon until after Christmas, so they'd be together at home with Anna.