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  I stood at the apron-front sink and took my time washing and drying our two plates, two forks, and two glasses. I put them in the cupboards, moving the plates to the bottom of the stack and the glasses to the back of the cupboard, according to Nora’s precise instructions.

  “That way they all get the same amount of use,” she’d said after lunch.

  When I was sure she was asleep, I crept into the dining room with the key and a working light bulb I had pilfered from one of the unused upstairs bedrooms. I silently slid open the drawers above the linens and found dozens of tapers and a brass candleholder. A kitchen drawer yielded a box of matches. I fitted the holder with a tall red candle, struck a match, and set it ablaze. It may still be light outside, but the cellar would be dark.

  The door to the cellar squeaked open. I held my breath and listened for footsteps. When nothing happened, I started down the stairs and shut the door most of the way. There was no way I was going to shut it completely and risk getting stuck down there. Leaning forward into the space below me to get a better look, I let the light bulb slip from my hand and stifled a gasp. I waited for the sound of breaking glass. Instead I heard a dull plop.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the ground reflected my meager flame. The light bulb had landed in a little puddle. I crept downstairs. Directly above the puddle a pipe dripped what must have been the remains of the dishwater. How long had it been leaking? I’d have to call a plumber.

  I fished the bulb out of the water and dried it on my shirt. The ground directly beneath the light socket was not wet, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I hadn’t done extensive research into electrocution, but I did know that electricity and water didn’t mix. I imagined Nora finding me there in a smoking heap the next morning and dying from the shock of it, our bodies not to be found until they had been reduced to skeletons. I’d stick with candlelight for now.

  I placed the light bulb on the bottom step and made my way to the door with the padlock. I would have prayed for success, but I was pretty sure God disapproved of invading someone’s privacy. Anyway, no prayer was needed. The key slid into the lock and the mechanism released with a click.

  The small space was packed with objects, but not the ones I might have hoped for. No gold or precious stones winked back at me—but also, thankfully, no skeletons. One wall was lined with a narrow countertop, upon which a row of bottles stood watch over three shallow trays. The bottles were labeled, but they may as well not have been, as I could make no sense of their polysyllabic contents. The trays were empty. In the corner of the counter was a metal object whose purpose eluded me. Was someone doing perfidious science experiments down here?

  I turned around and found myself eye to eye with a beautiful young woman. Or rather a picture of a beautiful young woman. A thin clothesline strung with black-and-white 8x10 photographs spanned the length of the room. The same striking blonde with large eyes and perfect skin was in every photo. I wanted to take them to Nora and ask who she was. But of course I couldn’t. Nora didn’t know I was down here. And the last time I went snooping into someone’s life without permission, it didn’t turn out so well.

  I looked over the trays and chemicals again. There was something familiar about it all. It reminded me of when I first toured the offices at the Free Press. Though everything had gone digital, there were still vestiges of an analog past here and there in dark corners.

  Then I got it. A darkroom.

  Did it belong to Mr. Rich’s uncle? Had these photos been taken with the camera that now sat in the bottom of the armoire? Who had locked that door? The photographer? What was he hiding? I plucked a photo off the line. Was he hiding her?

  At that moment, a motor started up just outside.

  “What in the world?” I said out loud.

  I double-checked that the key was in my pocket, replaced the lock, and headed up the stairs. My first step shattered the light bulb into a zillion pieces. I would have to clean it up tomorrow when I could get some real light shining down here.

  I burst out the back door just as a red riding lawn mower driven by a black man in a baseball cap zipped by. I waved and shouted, but it wasn’t until his third pass that the driver noticed me and cut the motor.

  “Are you William?” I asked, glad to finally lay eyes on this mysterious figure.

  He smiled and got off the mower. “I’m Tyrese.”

  “Are you at the wrong house?”

  He frowned behind his sunglasses. “No, this is Eleanor Rich’s house. Has been for years. Are you at the wrong house?”

  “Sorry. No. I just—I thought your name was William.” I extended my hand to him. “I’m Nora’s great-niece, Elizabeth.”

  He shook my hand. “Yeah, sometimes Ms. Rich calls me William. I assume she’s home? I have to apologize for coming so late, but I knew I wouldn’t get a chance later in the week.”

  “She’s asleep. Or she was. She might have woken up at the noise.” The wheels in my head began turning. “Hey, did she ever ask you to do anything in the house? Air out a room or clean things up or anything?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never been in the house.”

  “Oh. Weird. Why does she call you William?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Just started calling me that last summer. I figured she was getting old and maybe a little confused.”

  “Doesn’t that make cashing your checks a little difficult?” I joked, trying to ignore the bad feeling I was starting to get from all this.

  “Ms. Rich doesn’t pay me. Mr. Rich does. He’s down in Detroit. But she doesn’t know that,” he added quickly. “He told me when I first started this job that Ms. Rich wouldn’t accept it if she knew it was him paying for it.”

  I felt myself frowning. Why was James Rich going through all this trouble for a woman he was on bad terms with? “Who does she think is paying for it?”

  “I told her it was her taxes.”

  I gave him a doubtful look. “She seems smarter than that.”

  Tyrese smiled. “She is. It took some serious convincing, and for a while she tried to pay me anyway. But a friend of mine is a staffer for a state representative, and he corroborated the story for me with some official stationery. Convinced her it was a pilot program for helping rural seniors stay in their homes.”

  “Lucky for you she doesn’t get out much, or a bunch of other rural seniors would be wondering where their free lawn care was.”

  “Yeah.” He laughed. “Listen, I’ve got to get going on this lawn. Sun’s going down.”

  “Right. Sorry. Go right ahead.”

  I went inside and watched through the kitchen window as Tyrese zipped back and forth across the yard on the lawn mower. If he wasn’t William, then who was?

  I wished the house around me would open up and talk. Of course I knew that houses were merely wood and plaster and brick. But it felt like this particular house had a memory and it was hiding something from me. The crumbly cellar walls had been there when the photographer dipped photos of a beautiful woman into chemical baths and strung them up to dry. The walls of my bedroom had witnessed someone bringing in the incredible carved bedstead. The house had looked on as graves were dug and headstones were placed and herbs were planted.

  Yet all stood silent but for the creaking sounds that all old houses make. Were the answers to my questions there in those groans and snaps, waiting for an interpreter? Or would I have to slip into full reporter mode in order to pry the information out of my reluctant hostess? Mr. Rich had warned me to ease into talking about Nora’s past. But how did one ease into a topic that never came up?

  fourteen

  Detroit, April 1963

  William gave a low whistle. “Dang. Now that’s a car.” He circled the little red Corvette. “That this year’s model?”

  “Yes, it is,” Nora said with pride. “I got it for my birthday.”

  “You kidding me? This was a present?”

  “Well, my father . . .”

  “Oh, I see. Daddy’
s a car man.”

  “Not exactly. He’s an ad man. At GM. Corvette is his main account.”

  “Yeah, well, listen, I don’t know if I could fit these legs of mine in that little thing. It isn’t far. Let’s just hoof it.”

  Nora gave the car an anxious look but followed William as he began walking down the street. Beautiful cars were everywhere in Detroit, as much a part of the landscape as the striking Art Deco architecture or the rows of flowering trees lining the streets. But as she walked down Twelfth Street she could see that her car was outclassing everyone else’s. And there were no stunning buildings in this neighborhood, no prim cherry trees with their delicate pink blossoms. The houses hunched close together and all fell somewhere along a spectrum of disrepair that ranged from dirty to dilapidated. Paint peeled from siding, shingles curled on roofs, smoke stains peeked from beneath boarded-up windows.

  “What?” William said.

  “Hmm?”

  “What are you shaking your head for?”

  “I didn’t shake my head.”

  “Yeah you did. What’s the problem?”

  “Nothing.”

  He stopped walking a moment. “Come on.”

  Nora took a deep breath. “It’s just . . . I was just wondering why these people don’t keep their houses up very well.”

  William gave her an incredulous look. “You serious? You think the people who live there own those houses? They don’t own them. They’re rentals. Landlords don’t keep them up.”

  Nora felt a little stupid, but only for a moment. “Don’t they complain?”

  He started walking again. “Don’t do much good.”

  “Why wouldn’t the landlord maintain them?” Nora said from behind him.

  “No money in it.”

  “But why don’t they just move somewhere else, somewhere nicer?”

  “Where?” He laughed mirthlessly. “Bloomfield Hills?”

  She shrugged. “Why not?”

  William stopped again. “Oh, please. When was the last time you saw a black person in Bloomfield Hills who wasn’t just working in some white man’s home?”

  Nora searched her memories and came up empty. “Is it just too expensive?”

  “For most,” he conceded, “but there’s black people in this town could afford it.”

  “Then why live here?”

  “You live under a rock or something? You ever heard of Dr. Sweet?”

  “That wasn’t Bloomfield Hills.”

  “You’re right about that. It was Detroit. So how do you think he’d have fared in lily-white Bloomfield Hills?”

  Nora put her hands on her hips. “That was almost forty years ago.”

  “May as well have been forty minutes ago. Some places are just off-limits. Bloomfield Hills is white. If you think any Realtor in this city would sell a house in Bloomfield Hills to a black family, you’re out of your mind. And if they did, just watch how fast the rocks start flying.”

  He started walking again. In her hurry not to be left behind, Nora caught her heel on a broken piece of sidewalk and pitched forward. Her knee connected with the pavement.

  “Oh, man. You all right?” William said as he rushed back to help her up. He brushed at tiny stones that were embedded in her knee. “You’re bleeding.”

  Nora’s stocking was torn, and a trickle of red was beginning to drip down her left leg.

  William pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the blood. “We’re just a few houses away. Can you walk?”

  Nora sucked in a breath and nodded gamely. William’s hand hovered at her elbow, ready to steady her, as she hobbled forward, holding the handkerchief against the wound with her other hand and feeling very much like a broken marionette. Every few steps, Nora felt William’s warm fingers brush the inside of her arm, which only increased her embarrassment at the whole situation.

  In another minute, he ushered her up a set of creaky front steps and inside a house.

  “Have a seat.” He pointed at a tan couch. “I’ll be right back.”

  Nora lowered herself to the couch and examined the injury. William came back into the room holding a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a cotton ball, and a box of adhesive bandages.

  “It’s nothing,” Nora said.

  “No, no. You don’t want a nasty scab on that knee.”

  He knelt before her and dabbed her exposed flesh with the solution. It bubbled up and dripped down her leg. He caught the drop with the back of a finger, which he ran up her shin.

  “Um . . .” He hesitated. “A bandage isn’t going to stick with those stockings on.”

  Nora felt herself blush.

  “Here.” William handed her a bandage. “Bathroom’s just back there.” He motioned to a dark hall and stood up to give her some room.

  Nora hurried into the bathroom and shut the door. She hiked up her dress, slipped off her stockings one by one, and wadded them up into a ball. Should she throw them away there? She imagined what her mother would say if she ever found out she’d left her stockings at a man’s house. She stared at herself in the mirror. What was she doing here?

  With the bandage secure and her heartbeat returning to normal, Nora walked back to the living room and discreetly pushed her stockings into her purse. She needn’t have worried about discretion, however, as William was nowhere to be found. In his absence, Nora looked over the room. It was sparsely furnished but tidy. Fluffy pillows sat at pleasing angles. Houseplants showed no brown or dying leaves. A photo of a man in an Army uniform graced a side table. Nora absently ran her hand over the top of the small television. There was no dust.

  The front door opened and shut.

  “Um, hello?” came a feminine voice. The voice had an edge to it, like it was daring her to answer.

  Nora was startled to see a tall, thin black woman with fashionably straightened and flipped hair accompanied by a boy of about twelve. The two of them seemed just as surprised to see a strange white woman standing in their living room.

  The woman narrowed her eyes. “And just who are you?”

  Nora struggled to find her voice. “I’m Nora,” she practically whispered.

  The woman bit the inside of her cheek. The boy was looking at her like she’d just taken his ball and wouldn’t give it back. Nora’s mind was racing for the right thing to say when William walked in holding a large brown portfolio.

  “Oh, hey,” he said. “Bianca, this is Nora.”

  “Mmm,” Bianca said, clearly unimpressed.

  To Nora he said, “This is Bianca and J.J.”

  “Go on upstairs, J.J.,” Bianca said.

  William tried to rub J.J.’s head as he slipped by, but the boy ducked.

  The woman squared herself to face William. “I don’t know what this is, Will, but it looks like trouble to me.”

  “Relax,” he said.

  Bianca sighed. “Listen, I gotta get some sleep before my shift. J.J. should be fine in his room till dinnertime.”

  “Okay.” He kissed her cheek. “See you in a bit.”

  Bianca gave Nora one last long look, then said to William, “You better sort this out, and fast.” Then she disappeared down the hall.

  William sat on the couch and placed a large brown portfolio on the coffee table.

  Nora shook herself out of her stunned silence. “I should go.”

  William looked up. “Say what?”

  “I need to go.”

  “What? Why would you go now? The pictures are right here.”

  Nora lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. “This is not appropriate.”

  William looked around the room. “What?”

  She took a couple steps in the direction of the door, and he shot up from the couch.

  “Hey, what?”

  “How can you ask that? I thought you were . . . you know . . . how could you ask me to lunch when you’re—” Nora gestured at the hall down which Bianca had disappeared.

  William’s face was blank. Then he laughed. “Bianca’s my s
ister. We look almost exactly alike. She’s me in a wig. Didn’t you see? And J.J.’s my nephew.”

  “Well,” Nora said, recovering, “whoever she is, she does not want me here.”

  “So what? She ain’t the boss of me. Now sit down here and look at these photos, please.” He guided her back to the couch.

  “No, really,” Nora said. “Maybe I shouldn’t be here.”

  “But you are here. So you may as well have a look, right?”

  At his insistence, Nora sat gingerly on the couch.

  “Okay, are you ready now?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “No more craziness first?”

  “I’m ready,” she said sternly.

  William opened the portfolio to reveal the first black-and-white photograph. It was 8x10 and mounted on stiff black cardstock. In it, Nora was looking down and to the left, the smile she had not been able to suppress dancing on her lips. Even though the moment had been spontaneous, her eyes were in perfect focus and the play of light and shadow across her face seemed almost intended.

  It had been some time since she’d seen a photo of herself looking happy. There were many from the time when she was the same age as she imagined William’s nephew to be, but after about age thirteen her smile was replaced by closed lips that seemed to grow tighter as the years marched on. The distance between her and her older brothers had grown as they discovered far more interesting girls to hang out with. Her father had become so engrossed in his work that Nora found she rarely spoke to him. Her mother’s ever more obvious attempts to find fulfillment in her daughter’s accomplishments became a heavy chain of expectation around Nora’s neck. Her friends had become more competitive, more catty. Life no longer sparkled.

  Now, as Nora turned each page, she could see a bit of that lost spark, hinting at a different girl lying there underneath the severe young woman she had become. As she flipped through the portfolio, Nora became aware that William was looking not at the photos but at the side of her face. She felt her eyes begin to tear up as she turned over the last one, but she reined in her emotions and looked up at the artist beside her.