LorenCHAPTER ONE
Voices from the dining room echo up the walnut staircase, indistinct, buzzing, intrusive. With trembling hands I lock the door behind me. My world goes silent. I lean my head against the door and take a deep breath. The room still smells of her—Eau d’Hadrien perfume and goat’s-milk soap. Her iron bed creaks when I crawl over it, a sound as reassuring as the tinkle of her garden chimes, or her silky voice when she’d tell me she loved me. I came to this bed when she shared it with my father, complaining of an ache in my belly or monsters under my bed. Each time Mom took me in, holding me close and stroking my hair, whispering, “There will be another sky, my love, just you wait.” And then, as if by miracle, I’d wake the next morning to find ribbons of amber streaming through my lace curtains.
I kick off my new black pumps and rub my feet in relief. Scooting backward, I settle against the yellow paisley pillows. I’m going to keep this bed, I decide. No matter who else wants it, it’s mine. But I’ll miss this classy old brownstone. “She’s as sturdy as Grandmama,” Mom would say about her home. But to me, no house, no person, was ever as steady as Grandmama’s daughter—my mother—Elizabeth Bohlinger.
Suddenly I have a thought. Blinking back tears, I bound from the bed. She hid it up here, I know she did. But where? I throw open her closet door. My hands grope blindly behind designer suits and dresses. I yank at a rack of silk blouses, and they part like theater curtains. There it is, nestled in her shoe rack like an infant in its crib. One bottle of Krug, sequestered to her closet for the past four months.
Once it’s in my clutches, guilt infests me. This champagne belongs to Mom, not me. She splurged on the outrageous bottle on our way home from her first doctor’s appointment, and promptly tucked it away so it wouldn’t be confused with the regular bottles downstairs. It was a symbol of promise, she rationalized. At the end of her treatments, when she was given a clean bill of health, she and I would open the rare champagne as a celebration of life and miracles.
I finger the silver foil and bite my lip. I can’t drink this. It was meant for a celebratory toast, not for a grieving daughter too weak to make it through a funeral luncheon.