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window?”
    â€œI’m on it.”
    Maybe saving five dogs wasn’t saving the world, but these days I’d take what I could get. The snow had let up, and the gray clouds were thinning. Occasionally I could see wisps of blue sky as I drove over to the university area. The streets were clogged with school buses discharging children, and it took me longer to get there than I anticipated.
    The place Stephanie was staying in was located on Lancaster Avenue, a street made up of modest colonials occupied by professors, students, and docs from Upstate. It was situated on top of a small rise and nestled between two similar-looking houses. The house was a gray blue, but someone had painted the trim work a pale pink and surrounded the frame of the front window with a border of red flowers. Sometimes creativity should be discouraged.
    Christmas lights still hung from the windows. There was a Neon in the driveway. The path to the house hadn’t been shoveled, and my feet sank in the snow up to my ankles as I walked to the porch. I rang the bell. Stephanie answered at once. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t someone who looked like her.
    She was so thin, I could have circled her upper arm with my right hand. Her face was angular, her jaw prominent, and her nose, which was slightly red, looked as if it had seen the services of a plastic surgeon. She was wearing black jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, and black leather boots. New York City all the way. The lack of color in her clothes highlighted her cropped platinum hair and hazel eyes.
    â€œI take it you’re Robin Light,” she said, motioning for me to come in.
    I nodded. “Do you take after your mother’s side of the family?” Because she certainly didn’t take after her father’s.
    â€œNo. Thank God,” she replied as she took my coat and hung it on a hook in the hallway. “I’m adopted.”
    I followed her into the living room. The walls were covered with quilts. The rest of the furnishings—sofa, chairs, coffee table, and lamps—were Early American. Stephanie remained standing with her arms crossed over her chest. She looked as out of place as a piece of stainless in a packet of bows.
    â€œSo what do you do when you’re not up here?” I asked her.
    â€œI plan parties for people.”
    â€œIt must be interesting work.”
    â€œIt pays the bills.” She ran a thumbnail down the side of the arm of her black turtleneck sweater. “Like I said on the phone, I don’t think there’s anything I can tell you that will be of any help.”
    â€œAnd you don’t have any idea where your mother would go?”
    Stephanie shook her head. “We didn’t talk much when I was younger, and once I moved out of the house we hardly talked at all.”
    â€œBut you had to have talked about something.”
    â€œWell, yeah. When I was younger our conversations were about cleaning my room and coming home on time, and when I got older we talked about my hair and short skirts.”
    She cleared her throat. I waited.
    â€œReally,” Stephanie continued. “I mean, she’s a nice woman. Don’t get me wrong. But all I remember her doing is cooking and cleaning and watching television. A trip to the grocery store was a big outing for her.”
    â€œThat’s what your father said. So how come she took off all of a sudden? This doesn’t seem like her.”
    Stephanie reached in her sleeve for a Kleenex and blew her nose. “I don’t have a clue. Maybe she finally realized there’s a big world out there.”
    â€œYou don’t sound as if you care very much.”
    â€œOf course I care.” Stephanie’s voice rose. “She’s my mother. But I’ve learned not to spend my energy on things I can’t do anything about.”
    Something told me that wasn’t the whole story. Not even close to it.
    â€œMay I ask