With trepidation, he walked up the front steps, trying to avoid the two broken ones so as not to fall through, and he knocked on the door resoundingly.

The doorbell was hanging by a thread and clearly broken. And although he heard noises within, no one came to the door for a long time, and then finally a toothless old woman answered. She stared at him, confused, and then asked him what he wanted.

“I was looking for Eileen and Jack Jones. They lived here a long time ago. Did you know them?'.” He spoke loudly, in case she was deaf. But she did not seem so much deaf as stupid.

“Never heard of 'em. Why don't you ask Charlie across the street. He been living here since the war. Maybe he knew 'em.”

“Thank you.” A glance into the house told John that it was depressing beyond belief, and he only hoped that it had been more pleasant when Hilary and her sisters lived there. Though it was hard to imagine it ever having been much better. The street had become a slum, but it didn't look as though it had even been pretty. “Thank you very much.” He smiled pleasantly, and she slammed the door in his face, not because she was annoyed, but only because she didn't know there was any other way to do it.

He looked up and down the street, and thought of talking to some of the other residents. But he went first to the house she had pointed to. He wondered if anyone would be home at four o'clock on a Friday afternoon, but the old man she had called “Charlie” was rocking on his front porch, smoking a pipe, and talking to an old mangy dog who lay beside him.

“Hi there.” He looked friendly, and smiled at John as he came up the steps.

“Hello. Are you Charlie?” John smiled pleasantly. He had been good at this, in the days when he actually did the legwork. Now he just determined it from his desk on Fifty-seventh Street, but there was a certain thrill to doing this part of it again. He had tried to explain to Sasha once how much he loved it. But she couldn't understand it. To her, there was only dancing … and Lincoln Center … and rehearsals. Nothing else mattered. Sometimes he even found himself wondering if he did.

“Yes, I'm Charlie.” The old man answered. “Who wants to know?”

John stuck out a hand. “My name is John Chapman. I'm looking for some people who lived here years ago. In that house,” he pointed, “Eileen and Jack Jones. Do you remember them by any chance, sir?” He was always polite, friendly, at ease, the kind of guy everyone wanted to talk to.

“Sure, I do. Got Jack a job once. Didn't keep it long of course. Drank like a son of a bitch, and she did too. I heard it finally kilt her.” John nodded as though it were something he already knew. That was part of the art form. “I used to work in the navy yard. Damn good work too, durin' the war. I was 4-F 'cause I had rheumatic fever as a boy. Spent the whole war right here, close to home, with my wife and my kids. Sounds kinda unpatriotic now, but I was lucky.”

“You had children then, did you?” John looked at him with interest.

“They're all growed now.” He rocked back and forth and a sad look came into his eyes as he gnawed on his pipe. “And my wife's gone. Died fourteen years ago this summer. She was a good woman.” John nodded again, letting the old man ramble on. “My boys come to see me from time to time, when they can. Daughter lives in Chicago. Went to see her last year, Christmas, colder'n a witch's teat. Got six kids too. Her husband's a preacher.” It was an interesting history and John patted the dog as he listened.

“Do you remember three little girls who came to live with the Joneses about thirty years ago … right about this time of year … it was the summer of '58, to be precise. Three little girls. One about nine years old, one five, and the littlest one was a baby. She must've been about a year old.”

“Naw … can't say as I do … they never had any kids, Jack and Eileen. Just as well. They weren't real nice people. Used to have some knock-down drag-out fights those two. Nearly called the cops on 'em one night. I figured he'd kill her.” It sounded like a charming home in which to leave three children.

“They were her brother's children. They were just here for the summer, but one of them stayed on afterward …” He let his voice trail off, hoping to jog Charlie's memory, and suddenly the old man looked up at him with a frown, and pointed the pipe into John's face with a burst of recognition.

“Now that you say all that, I do remember … some terrible thing … he had killed his wife, and the little girls were orphans. I only seen 'em once or twice, but I remember Ruth, that's my wife, tellin' me how cute they were and how terrible Eileen was to 'em, that it was a crime to leave those children with her. Half starved 'em, Ruth said, she took 'em some dinner once or twice, but she was sure Jack and Eileen ate it and never gave it to the children. I never knew what happened to 'em though. They left pretty soon after that. Eileen took sick, and they went somewhere. Arizona, I think … California … someplace warm seems like … but she died anyway. Drank herself to death if you ask me. Don't know what happened to them little girls though. I guess Jack musta kep' 'em.”

“Only one of them. The rest of them left that summer. They just kept the oldest one.”

“I guess Ruth musta known that. I forget.” He leaned back in his chair, as though remembering more than Jack and Eileen, it was all so long ago, and his wife had been alive then … it was bittersweet to remember back that far … he seemed to forget John as he rocked back and forth in his rocking chair, and he had given John what he'd come for. He hadn't learned anything he desperately needed to know, but it was a little piece of the puzzle. It explained some of Arthur's guilt. He must have known how terrible they were, and yet he had left them there … and left Hilary to them … in effect abandoned her to them. He could only begin to imagine what her life had been like in the house across the street, with the kind of people Charlie had described to him. The thought of it made John shudder.

“Do you think anyone else along here would remember them?” John asked, but Charlie shook his head, still lost in his reverie, and then he looked up at John and answered.

“No one lived here that long, 'cept me. The others all been here ten, fifteen years … most of 'em less. They stay a year or two, then move away.” It was easy to see why. “My eldest boy wants me to come live with him, but I like it here. … I lived here with his ma … I'll die here one day.” He said it philosophically. It was all right with him. “I ain't goin'.”

“Thanks for your help. You've been a big help to me.” He smiled down at Charlie who looked up at him with open curiosity for the first time.

“Why you want to find Eileen and Jack? Somebody leave 'em some money?” It hardly seemed likely, even to him, but it was an intriguing idea, but John was quick to shake his head.

“No. Actually, I'm looking for the three girls. A friend of their parents wants to find them.”

“That's a hell of a long time ago to lose someone and then go looking for 'em.” John knew only too well how true that was.

“I know. That's why you've been such a help. You put the picture together with little tiny pieces of what people remember and now and then you get lucky, like I did with you. Thank you, Charlie.” He shook the old man's hand, and Charlie waved his pipe at him.

“They pay you good for a job like that? Seems like a lot of wild-goose chasin' to me.”

“Sometimes it is.” He left the previous question unanswered and waved as he stepped off the porch and walked back to his car. It was depressing just driving down the street, and it was as though he felt Hilary's eyes on him, as though he were Arthur leaving her there, and he couldn't help wondering how Arthur could have done it.

The drive to his parents' house after that took less than an hour, and his older brother was already there when he arrived, drinking a gin and tonic on the terrace with his father.

“Hi, Dad. You look great.” The old man looked more like sixty than nearly eighty. There was no tremor in his voice, he still had his hair, and he had the same long, lanky legs as John as he strode across the terrace to put an arm around his shoulders.

“Well, how's my black-sheep son?” They always teased him, but they were proud of him too. He was successful, attractive, led an interesting life. The only thing his parents regretted for him was that he had divorced Eloise, they had always hoped the two would stay together and have children. “Keeping yourself out of trouble?”

“Not if I can help it. Hello, Charles.” He shook hands with his brother and the two men smiled. There was always a certain distance between them, and yet John was fond of him. He was a partner in an important law firm in New York and he had done well. He was forty-six years old, he was powerful in the field of international law, he had an attractive wife who was president of the Junior League, and he had three very nice children. By the standards of John's family, Charles was the major achiever. But John always felt there was something missing from Charles's life, excitement perhaps, or maybe just plain old romance.

And with that, Leslie, his wife, walked out of the house with her mother-in-law, who gave a whoop of delight when she saw John talking to his brother and father.

“The prodigal son has arrived,” she intoned in her husky voice, hugging him close to her. She was still a handsome woman at seventy, and even in her plain yellow linen dress, there was an innate elegance about her. She wore her hair in an elegant knot, a string of pearls around her neck that her husband had given her on her wedding day, and the rings that had been in her family for five generations. “Don't you look well, darling! What have you been up to?”

“A little work on the way up. I just started a new investigation.” She looked pleased. She enjoyed her sons. They were all handsome and different and intelligent, and she loved them all, but secretly she had always loved John just a little bit more than the others.

“I hear you've gotten involved with the ballet.” Leslie said coolly, eyeing John carefully over her Bloody Mary. There was something mean-spirited about the girl which always irked John, but he was amazed that no one else even seemed to notice. She was one of those women who had everything and should have enjoyed it, two lovely daughters, a charming son, a handsome, successful husband, and yet she seemed to begrudge everyone everything they had, particularly John. She always felt that somehow he had done better than Charles, and it annoyed her. “I had no idea you were interested in the dance, John.”

“You never know, do you?” He smiled noncommittally, amazed that she had heard about Sasha, and then he chuckled to himself inwardly, thinking that maybe she had been meeting a lover at the Russian Tea Room.

Moments later, Philip arrived, looking very tan after a European vacation. He and his family lived in Connecticut, and he played tennis constantly. He had a son and a daughter and a wife with blond hair and blue eyes and freckles. She looked exactly like what she was, the childhood sweetheart he had married in college. He was thirty-eight years old, and so was she, and she won all the tennis tournaments in Greenwich. They were truly the perfect family, except for John, who had never quite fit into the mold, and never done what was expected.

And bringing Sasha up here would have complicated things even further. Eloise had been difficult enough. When she wanted to be sociable, she was great, and when she didn't, she would bring a type-writer, and insist on working till lunchtime, which drove Leslie nuts, and made his mother worry that she wasn't having a good time. Eloise was definitely not easy. But Sasha would have really been a shock to them with her leotards and her skintight blue jeans and her fits of petulance and her scenes of defiance. The very thought of her made him grin to himself as he looked at the ocean.

“What's so funny, big brother?” Philip clapped him on the back, and John asked him all about Europe. The hardest thing of all was that they were all such nice people, and he loved them, but they bored him to death, and by Sunday afternoon, it was a relief to be driving to the airport. He felt guilty for thinking it, but they all led such normal, suburban lives. By the end of a weekend, he always felt like a misfit. At least his mother had had a nice time. Each of her sons had given her something special that was important to her. John had bought her a beautiful antique diamond pin with a matching bracelet, and it was just the kind of thing he knew his mother loved. Charles had given her stock, which John thought was an odd gift, but she seemed to be pleased with it, and Philip had given her something she had said she wanted for years, but never bought herself. A grand piano was being delivered to the house in Boston on Monday. It was just like him to do something like that, and John thought it was a terrific gift and wished he'd thought of it himself. But she seemed happy with the pin and bracelet.