“Old property files don’t lie,” she said with a small smile.

“Even when rich strangers do.”

At nine fifteen my kitchen was dark apart from the little overhead lamp above the stove and two beeswax candles Emily had lit in the middle of the wooden table.

We sat facing each other, drinking warm chamomile tea from ceramic mugs.

Between the sugar bowl and the teapot stood the eight-by-ten silver picture frame I’d moved off the front hall table three years earlier.

In the picture, Sarah had on her heavy yellow canvas garden gloves and a faded gray sweatshirt.