Brass Ring by Diane Chamberlain Page A

opened, and he saw her car in its usual spot when he pulled inside. Good. She was home. Probably went to bed early. He felt suddenly foolish for having stayed out so late himself.
    He wheeled through the back door into the kitchen, where the small light above the stove cast a pool of white on the tiled floor, and he shut his eyes at the strains of Chopin coming from the stereo.
    “Claire?”
    “In here.”
    He wheeled into the family room. She was sitting on the sofa, in the darkness, and he felt an unfamiliar surge of fear.
    “Why are you sitting in the dark?” he asked.
    “I don’t know. Just didn’t get around to turning on the light, I guess.”
    He hit the wall switch and saw her wince at the intrusion. She had drawn her feet onto the sofa and sat hugging her knees.
    “How about some different music?” he asked.
    She shrugged. “Sure.”
    He wheeled over to the stereo and hit the disc-skip button. Otis Redding started singing about the dock on the bay, and Jon thought he had never heard a more refreshing, soul-reviving, sound.
    Claire had lowered her head to rest her cheek on her knees, and she ran her fingers slowly over the pale tweed fabric of the sofa. What was wrong with her?
    “Are you all right?” he asked.
    She nodded without lifting her cheek from her knee.
    He wheeled closer. “How’d your meeting go?”
    “Okay.” She sounded unsure of the answer, but she raised her head to look at him. “We met in this quaint little theater in McLean, and he told me about the night Margot and her brother fell off the bridge when they were kids.”
    She recounted the story to him, and he studied her face as she spoke. There was something unrecognizable there. Maybe it was the odd angle of the lighting. It illuminated her right temple and the small jut of her chin, leaving the rest of her features in darkness. Her face was not her own, and her voice was flat. That same intonation might have sounded perfectly normal in someone else, but in Claire, whose voice usually bubbled with life, the words sounded dry and stale.
    He listened carefully and without comment until she had finished. Maybe she simply needed to talk, he thought. Maybe if she got every speck of it out, it would end. Every day he hoped it would end. Instead, she seemed to be getting drawn even more deeply into the pit of gloom Margot had dug for her.
    Claire sighed when she had finished speaking. She stretched her arms toward the ceiling. “Anyhow,” she said, “listening to Randy talk about Margot made me think about Vanessa.”
    “Vanessa?” Jon frowned. He didn’t see the connection, and he hadn’t heard Claire mention her sister’s name in years.
    “Yes. Randy feels guilty for not doing more to keep the bond alive between himself and Margot. He thinks he took the easy way out. I’m doing the same thing.”
    “Oh, Claire, how can you say that?” He heard the impatience creeping into his voice and tried to tame it. “Margot’s brother knew where she was, and he chose not to spend more time with her. You don’t know where to find Vanessa. If you did, I’m sure you’d do everything you could to be a sister to her.”
    “But I have an address for her,” Claire argued. “At least for where she was a few years ago.”
    “And you wrote to her, and she never answered. And you tried to find a phone number, and it was unlisted. What more could you do?”
    She ran her hand across the sofa cushion again, her eyes lowered. “I could go to Seattle,” she said. “I could show up at her door, or if she doesn’t live at that address any longer, I could question her neighbors and track her down. There’s got to be a way to find her, and I haven’t done a thing about it.”
    “I think Vanessa doesn’t want to be found.” He had never met Claire’s sister. After Claire’s parents separated, her father simply took Vanessa and ran. He didn’t get in touch with Claire or with Mellie—his wife, and the girls’ mother—again until his