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Immediately Marcy backed away from the window, although she was on the third floor and it was highly doubtful he could have seen her.
    Had Peter ever kissed her with such passion? she wondered. Had she ever responded with such unbridled joy?
    Marcy crossed back to the closet and opened the safe deposit box, her hand brushing against the pair of gold hoop earrings Judith had given her for her fiftieth birthday as she reached for the midsize envelope at the very back of the black-velvet-lined box.
    Returning to the bed, Marcy opened the envelope and removed the half-dozen photographs, careful to avoid the smaller second envelope inside it, the single word “MOMMY” scrawled across its front. She laid the pictures across the white comforter, studied each one carefully: Devon as a round little baby in her mother’s arms, one happy face mimicking the other, both with the same huge brown eyes, the same cupid’s-bow mouth; Devon as a child of five, wearing a fluffy pink tutu, balancing on chubby little legs and smiling proudly toward the ballet slippers on her feet; Devon on her twelfth birthday, meticulously straightened bangs completely covering her forehead and falling into her eyes, her mouth stretched wide open to show off her newly installed porcelain braces; Devon and Marcy celebrating Devon’s sweet sixteen, arms circling each other’s waists as they leaned over the flower-covered cake to blow out the candles; Devon at eighteen, hovering on the edge of beauty, staring straight at the camera, straggly dark curls falling past her shoulders, her smile timid, unsure. Marcy noted the sadness that was already creeping into the corners of her daughter’s eyes, although there was still a hint of defiance in the set of her chin, as if she were daring the photographer to get too close; and finally, Devon, only weeks before her overturned canoe was found floating in the middle of the bay, wearing an old blue sweater and smoking her now omnipresent cigarette, her once expressive dark eyes blank and rimmedwith red, her cupid’s-bow lips now a thin, flat line, carrying not even the pretense of a smile.
    Marcy sat staring at the pictures, wondering at Devon’s transformation from giddy toddler to morose young woman. My fault, she thought. Everything, my fault.
    There was yet another photograph inside the envelope and Marcy pulled it out. It was a black-and-white picture of her mother, taken around the time she’d turned twenty-one. She was standing in front of a large mirror, her regal profile reflected in the glass at her back. Her eyes were downcast and her long brown hair was pulled off her forehead and away from her face. She was wearing a dress of pale organza, a dark velvet bow at her breast. Her left hand held a gardenia that she pressed coyly to her chin.
    Only the slightest hint of madness in her eyes.
    The person who’d taken that picture had been desperately in love with her, as her mother had been fond of recounting. Theirs had been an exciting, wild affair, full of fights and reconciliations, of tantrums and ultimatums and declarations of undying devotion, a whirlwind of constantly shifting emotions. And yet, in the end, her mother had opted for safety and security over whirlwinds and excitement. She’d married George Fraser, a man whose name said it all. He was uncomplicated, straightforward, and too sane for his own good.
    A man much like Peter in so many ways, Marcy acknowledged reluctantly. Both men never knew what hit them.
    Marcy stuffed the pictures back inside their envelope, quickly returning the envelope to the safe deposit box. Then she grabbed her coat and purse and headed out the door, unexpectedly coming face-to-face with her image in the full-length mirror beside the elevators and seeing the faces of both her mother and her daughter staring back, their dark eyes filledwith reproach. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as the elevator door opened.
    The elegant lobby was lined with marble columns and