I knew Joe, didn’t I?
I turned back to the bed and was about to undo the bedding and inspect the linens when I saw a photo on the night table. It was of me and Joe six months ago in Sausalito, his arm around me as the breeze whipped my hair across my face. We both looked in love.
I pressed my hands to my eyes.
I was so ashamed. The sobs simply poured out of me. I just stood there in Joe’s bedroom and cried.
And then I left and went back to California.
Part Two
BROWN-EYED GIRL
Chapter 28
MADISON TYLER HOPSCOTCHED over the lines in the sidewalk, then raced back to her nanny’s side, grabbing her hand as they walked toward Alta Plaza Park, Madison saying, “Were you listening, Paola?”
Paola Ricci squeezed Madison’s small hand.
Sometimes the little girl’s enchanting five-year-old precocity was almost more than Paola could understand.
“Of course I was listening, darling.”
“As I was saying,” the girl said in the funny grown-up way she had, “when I play Beethoven’s Bagatelle, the first notes are an ascending scale, and they look like a blue ladder —”
She trilled the notes.
“Then, the next part, when I play C-D-C, the notes are pink-green-pink!” she exclaimed.
“So you imagine that those notes have colors?”
“No, Paola,” the little girl said comically, patiently. “The notes are those colors. Don’t you see colors when you sing?”
“Nope. I guess I’m a ninny,” Paola said. “A ninny-nanny.”
“I don’t know what a ninny-nanny is,” Madison said, her dazzling smile setting off sparks in her big brown eyes. “But it sounds very funny.”
The two laughed hard, Madison grabbing Paola around the waist, burying her face in the young woman’s coat as they passed the exclusive Waldorf School, only a block and a half from where Madison lived with her parents.
“It’s Saturday,” Madison whispered to Paola. “I don’t have to even look at school on Saturday.”
Now the park was only a block away, and seeing the stone walls surrounding it, Madison got more excited and changed subjects.
“Mommy says I can have a red Lakeland terrier when I get a little older,” Madison confided as they crossed Divisadero. “I’m going to name him ‘Wolfgang.’ ”
“What a serious name for a little dog,” Paola said, intent on crossing the street safely. She barely glanced at the black minivan idling outside the park’s fence. Expensive black minivans were as common as crows in Pacific Heights.
Paola swung Madison’s arm, and the child jumped up onto the curb, then stopped suddenly as someone got out of the vehicle and came quickly toward them.
Madison said to her nanny, “Paola, who is that?”
“What’s wrong?” Paola called to the man stepping out of the van.
“Trouble at home. You’ve both got to come with us right now. Madison, your mom took a fall down the stairs.”
Madison stepped out from behind her nanny’s back, shouting, “My daddy told me never to ride with strangers! And believe me, you’re strange.”
The man picked up the child like a bag of birdseed, and as she shouted, “Help! Put me down,” he tossed her into the backseat of the van.