CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
July 5, 2010
Evening
Cleo arrived first in the living room. She watched Mrs. Seabrook draw the living room curtains and switch on the chandelier. Yellow circles splashed across the black and white squares of the chessboard.
“I wish I had more to tell you,” Mrs. Seabrook said as she lowered herself onto the sofa. She was a rock slipping into a pond, trying to make no ripples. She pulled a long pin from her hair, and a coil of dark brown, richly streaked with gray, tumbled down her back. Her eyes grew distant and darkened as her hands spread firmly over her kneecaps. Her strength ran deeper than muscles earned by rolling dough or scrubbing counters. It came from within. She was suddenly a person who Cleo thought a grown man might fear to meet in a dark alley.
Calvin
