Page 35 of Meet Me in the Garden

“We don’t know,” I say. “But this will help. Thank you again. So much.”

I wait. A second of quiet between us. Another. I’m young and spent from pleasure, my cheek against her bare chest. Soon, I’ll leave her and meet Delphine in the garden.

“The least I can do,” she says. “You take care of yourself. Give your family my love.”

“Plenty of Kelleys,” Lionel says when I hang up. “But none with the first name Robert. Not on the east side. Got a western White Pages somewhere?”

Al leaves and I sit at the table with my head in my hands, overcome. And then he’s back with the book, open to the page. “Two Robert Kelleys on the west side. One on Euclid, the other on North Harper. Odette, you want to call? Or want me to?”

“I’ll do it.” He reads me the first number and I call without knowing what I’ll say. A woman answers. I tell her I might have the wrong number but I’m calling about a Delphine Kelley and I’m wondering if she knows her.

“Pretty name, but I don’t know anyone by it,” she says.

Al reads me the next number, but it doesn’t go through. We try again. A dead line.

“We could go over there,” Lionel says.

“It’s a long drive,” Adele says.

“What else are we doing?” I ask. “Lionel and I will go, and you can stay home in case the police call us back.”

Adele nods. “I’ll try the hospitals again, too.”

On the road, I use the Thomas Guide to navigate, comforted by the orderly index, the clearly delineated streets. I don’t talk apart from giving directions. I keep hearing Hattie’s voice, close against my ear. When we reach Sunset, billboards loom, everything becomes huge and glaring. “Up here,” I say. “Turn left.” We’re on North Harper now, I’m woozy, in just a minute or two I’ll be knocking at the door. I locate a street number. “We have a few blocks to go.”

He takes them slowly. We pass apartment buildings, grand and lovely, rows of trees laden with purple flowers out front. After the next block, the road splits and narrows, and the trees are older here, the road shaded, the buildings still grand but smaller, single-family homes now. Another address comes into view—soon now—and I don’t want to count down with the numbers. I have faith that I’ll know it.

A block later, a glimpse of apricot in the distance. We roll past palms, magnolias, thick hedges, getting closer, and here it is. A flat façade,its color bright against the sky. White columns framing the doorway. Drapes parted in the windows. “It’s this one, on the left,” I say. The number matches.

Lionel pulls over across the street. Together, we stare out his window.

I open the car door, heart in my throat. “You coming?”

“Better for Delphine if I stay.”

He’s right. “Okay. Wish me luck.”

The street’s lined with old houses and expensive cars. Our front yards in Compton are better kept, and each overgrown bush or patch of dried grass here seems to say,We don’t need to try nearly as hard as you do.I go up the walk of the apricot house. A man answers the door. He’s tall and blond. He could be Bill, nothing about him says that he isn’t. Delphine could be home, right here, in one of these rooms. I tell him my name, say I’m sorry to bother him, explain that I’m Delphine’s cousin, that I’m looking for her.

“Delphine,” he says with a vague recognition. “Just a minute. Let me get my wife.” The scene shifts. Not Bill. Not Delphine’s house. A petite woman with a headband appears on the front steps, a baby on her hip. They bought the house a little over a year ago, she’s heard about Delphine from some of the neighbors. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s see if Linda’s home.”

Two houses down, Linda answers the door. She’s a brunette, an intelligence in her eyes as she looks me over. “Delphine never mentioned any cousins, but you do look like her.”

“Have you heard from her recently?” I ask.

“Hardly. For a couple years, we had a standing date on Tuesdays to play Bridge—neither of us missed it for the world. She was just darling. We all loved her. And then she started, well,slipping. That would be the tactful way to put it. Naomi, describe what the house was like when you and Phillip first saw it.”

Naomi shifts her baby onto the other hip. “It was pretty rough. We’d been trying to find a place on this street, so as soon as our real estate agent heard about it we went right over, before it was officially on the market or cleaned up. None of us knew what we were stepping into. They left somuch behind. Normal stuff like books and furniture, but also dirty dishes and mail and clothes. We have built-in shelves all along the living room walls—it’s one of the features of the house I love the most—but on the higher shelves, the books were all shoved back to make room for old coffee cups and dirty plates.”

I’m trying to understand it. “Just the higher shelves?”

“Yes. And a bunch of toys were scattered all over the floor. It was pretty depressing, honestly.”

Linda says, “Delphine used to keep her house up just fine. They had a housekeeper a couple days a week. We shared a girl. But after Bill left, Delphine couldn’t afford to pay her. All the money ran out. Some of us tried to help but she wouldn’t accept it. She stopped making sense. And then, one morning, she and Nathalie were just gone.”

The name Delphine chose, coming from a stranger’s mouth. “Nathalie,” I repeat, so I can hear it in my voice instead.

“Such a spitfire. Delphine was always soft on her. My husband says Bill just couldn’t take it anymore, with either of them.”