morning.
'It's all hype, you know,' Stefan said, looking up at the gold and glass facade of the Cesar Pelli- designed building. 'The Ransomes of the art world excel at manipulation. The scarcity of his work only makes it more desirable to the
'No, I think it's the quality that's rare, Stefan. Courbet, Bonnard, he shares their sense of. . . call it a divine melancholy.'
' 'Divine melancholy.' Nicely put. I must remember to filch that one for my
Echo was looking past him at the Woman in Black, who had walked out of the museum and was headed for a taxi.
Stefan turned. 'Who, or what, is that?'
'I don't know. I saw her in the gallery. Caught her staring at me.' Uncanny, Echo thought, how much she resembled the black queen on Echo's chessboard at home.
'Apparently, from her lack of interest now, you rebuffed her.'
Echo shook her head. 'No. Actually she never said a word. Dinner? Stefan, I'm sorry. You're set at Legal's with the Bronwyns for eight-thirty. But I have to get back to New York. I thought I told you.
Engagement party tonight. Peter's sister.'
'Which sister? There seems to be a multitude.'
'Siobhan. The last one to go.'
'Not that huge, clumsy girl with the awful bangs?'
'Hush. She's really very sweet.'
'Now that Peter has earned his gold shield, am I correct to assume the next engagement party will be yours?'
'Yes. As soon as we all recover from this one.'
Stefan looked deeply aggrieved. 'Echo, have you any idea what childbearing will do to your lovely complexion?'
Echo looked at her watch and smiled apologetically.
'I can just make the four o'clock Acela.'
'Well, then. Get in.'
Echo was preoccupied with answering e-mail during their short trip up Memorial Drive and across the river to Boston's South Station. She didn't notice that the taxi the Woman in Black had claimed was behind them all the way.
Hi Mom,
Busy day. I had to hustle but I made the four o'clock train. I'll probably go straight to Queens from the station so won't be home until after midnight. Scored points with the boss today; tell you all about it at breakfast. Called Uncle Rory at the Home, but the Sister on his floor told me he probably wouldn't know who I was ...
The Acela was rolling quietly through a tunnel on its way out of the city. In her coach seat Echo, riding backwards, looked up from the laptop she'd spent too much time with today. Her vision was blurry, the back of her neck was stiff, and she had a headache. She looked at her reflection in the window, which disappeared as the train emerged into bright sunlight. She winced and closed her laptop after sending the message to her mother, rummaged in her soft-leather shoulder bag for Advil and swallowed three with sips of designer water. Then she closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.
When she looked up again she saw the Woman in Black looking solemnly at her before she opened the vestibule door and disappeared in the direction of the club car.
The look didn't mean anything. The fact that they were on the same train didn't mean anything either.
Even so for a good part of the trip to New York, while Echo tried to nap, she couldn't get the woman out of her mind.
Two
After getting eight stitches to close the cut near his left eye at the hospital in Flatbush, Peter O'Neill's partner Ray Scalla drove him to the 7-5 station house, where Pete retrieved his car and continued home to Bayside, Queens. By then he'd put in a twelve-hour day, but he had a couple of line-of-duty off days coming.
The engagement party for his sister Siobhan was roaring along by the time he got to the three-story brick-and-shingle house on Compton Place, and he had to hunt for a parking space a block and a half away.
He walked back to the house swapping smack with neighborhood kids on their bikes and skateboards. The left eye felt swollen. He needed an ice bag, but a cold beer would be the first order of business. Make it two beers.
The O'Neill house was lit up to the roof-line. Floodlights illuminated half a dozen guys playing a scuffling game of basketball in the driveway. Peter was related one way or another to all of them, and to everyone on the teeming porch.
His brother Tommy, a freshman at Hofs-tra on a football scholarship, fished in a tub of cracked ice and pitched Pete a twelve-ounce Rolling Rock as he walked up to the stoop. Kids with Game Boys cluttered the steps. His sister Kathleen, just turned thirty, was barefoot on the front lawn, gently rocking an infant to sleep on her shoulder. She gave Pete a kiss and frowned at the patched eye.
'So when's number four due?'
