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waited a second longer to see if Oggy had magically returned. Then she said, “Hallo?” again.
    There was no answer, but Audrey followed the smell of frying meat into the kitchen, where she found her father standing over the stove, still wearing his business clothes. When she tiptoed up behind him and gave him a light poke in the ribs, he gave a start and turned with a stricken look that dissolved upon seeing Audrey.
    â€œStealthy little Polliwog,” he said.
    â€œJumpy ol’ Dad.”
    Audrey could always tell how much her father loved seeing her by the way his face would lose its haggardness for a second or two. “Jumpy,
hungry
ol’ Dad,” he said. “How about you? Hungry?”
    â€œWas, until I saw the frying fatty meat,” Audrey said with a grin.
    â€œCheeky, cheeky,” her father said. “I’ll have you know I went to Oggy’s favorite butcher shop for these morsels.” He converted to a bad Teutonic impression of Oggy. “Dis
Wurst
is de best!”
    Audrey laughed because it had been a while since her father had even tried to be funny.
    While her father cracked eggs into a mixing bowl, Audrey split English muffins and set the table with apple butter (his favorite) and orange marmalade (hers). His suit had a strange shine to it, as if it were worn, or inexpensive.
    â€œThat jacket’s showing its age,” Audrey said.
    He smiled over his shoulder. “I know. I need to buy a few new suits. Problem’s making the time.”
    â€œWhat about Enzio?” Enzio was the tailor who brought suits to the firm for him and other executives to try on.
    Her father seemed not to hear her, and as he slid eggs and sausage onto the china plate, it was clear he was distracted.
    â€œDad?” Audrey said.
    He didn’t answer. He was just standing with the skillet in his hand, staring toward the wall.
    â€œDad?”
    This time he heard her, and turned. “Oh, sorry, Polliwog,” he said. “But you know what? I just thought of something that might be important to a project.”
    So, after gulping down a couple of bites of food and giving Audrey a kiss on the forehead, her father headed out the door and back to work. She listened to the sound of his car recede into stillness.
    Suddenly the house felt deeply silent. Audrey ate another bite or two, then scraped her plate into the trash, cleaned up the kitchen, and walked down the hall to Oggy’s room.
    Oggy’s bedspread was white chenille, and Audrey tried not to wrinkle it as she lay down. She studied the painting Oggy looked at when she went to sleep and when she woke up: a woman harvesting wheat. Beside her on the nightstand was a round silver-framed picture of Audrey at about five years old, wearing a Halloween princess costume. Audrey slid open the drawer of the nightstand and selected a white handkerchief with little pink flowers silk-screened in the corner. It smelled faintly of the Echt Kölnisch Wasser, and Audrey laid it over her face and closed her eyes. She pretended that she was five years old and Oggy was in the kitchen frying
Reibeplätzchen.
This worked the way it always worked—within five minutes, Audrey was asleep.
    Half an hour later, she woke up, refolded the handkerchief, and looked at the woman harvesting wheat. She smoothed out the chenille spread. Then she headed upstairs, turning off lights behind her so that, by the time she started her homework, the only illumination within the old McNair mansion shone from the empty memorial room and Audrey’s bedroom window.

Chapter 8
    The Distance Between Them
    A bad feeling had risen in Clyde when he’d brought up Jemison on MapQuest and found Van Buren on the east side of town. Half an hour later, as he turned his scooter into Audrey’s neighborhood, the bad feeling grew worse. Right and left, huge trees spread over wide lawns that fronted two-, three-, and even four-story houses. At the end of long