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want?”
    “Hannah, it’s me, Lilith.”
    Though she didn’t expect her sister to run into her arms, Lilith was disappointed at the lack of any reaction. Hannah looked at her wide-eyed, the way she used to when she was just a kid. But now there was no adoration. No anticipation. No nothing.
    Lilith swept a stiff Hannah into her arms. “I found you. Finally, I found you.”
    Hannah pushed her away. “I’m sure you tried real hard. It’s been how long?”
    “Years. And I spent them all looking for you.”
    Hannah didn’t say anything. She just stared as if she were wondering what to believe.
    “Can we get out of here? Go someplace to talk?”
    For a breath-holding second, Lilith thought Hannah would refuse. Then her sister shrugged and said, “Yeah, sure. We can go to my place. Car’s over there.”
    Over there being a row of diagonal parking spots against the back of the building. Hannah unlocked the door to not just a car but a Jaguar convertible that must have cost enough to pay for a good part of law school.
    Tension wired between them as Hannah drove fast and a little too carelessly. Lilith hung onto the handle in the door and prayed they would get to her sister’s place in one piece. When Hannah turned down a dead-end street and pulled up to what looked like an old manufacturing building set along the Chicago River, Lilith asked, “Where are we?” and Hannah said, “Home.”
    Home was a conversion. One of only several units in the building. A soft loft of tremendous proportions and with an incredible view of the river. The windows on that side ran floor to ceiling. Lilith looked around her and willed her jaw not to drop. Her own walk-up flat could fit into one corner of the massive double-storied main room. The furnishings were sparse but expensive. Leather upholstery, mahogany furniture, real Oriental rugs.
    “We have a dock on the river, too. I’m thinking of getting myself a boat next year,” Hannah said airily. “If I’m still here.”
    “The rent on this place must be out of this world.”
    “What makes you think I rent it? Because of what I do? I make good money, Lilith. Great money.” She waited a beat. “Yeah, okay, I rent it, but only because I get bored easily and might decide I don’t like things and that I want to move on.”
    Undoubtedly the reason she’d been impossible to find.
    “What do you like, Hannah?”
    “I like living here in luxury. I like driving a fast car, wearing nice clothes, going to the best restaurants.”
    “What about what you do to get all that?”
    “Who the hell do you think you are?”
    “Your sister, who is concerned about you.”
    “My sister abandoned me.”
    Even as her stomach tightened, Lilith shook her head in denial. “It wasn’t like that, Hannah. I just went away to school so I could get a good job and take care of us.”
    “I know it’s been twelve years, but if I remember correctly, when you were getting ready to leave, I asked you to take me with you, and you said no.”
    “I was seventeen!”
    “And I was twelve. You left me there, knowing.”
    “I didn’t think he would hit you , Hannah. You weren’t like me. I was the one with the big mouth. I was the one who stepped between him and Mama.” She could see Mama now, bruised arms, blackened eye. Horrified that had happened to Hannah, as well – her mother never admitted to the abuse going on in their home – she said, “You were the quiet one, the mouse.”
    “When you left, someone had to protect Delores.”
    Why was Hannah calling their mother by her first name? Had Hannah cut them both out of her heart?
    Lilith shook her head. Someone always had to protect Mama. Someone always had to take care of her. That’s why she’d married Marlon Aldrich when Lilith had been fourteen, Hannah nine. That’s how they’d gotten to this place. Lilith fought buried feelings of resentment and betrayal for her mother from surfacing.
    “Have you seen Mama lately?” Lilith asked, wondering