“I don’t think so, Jill. Why?”
“It’s just — she was alive, and then she wasn’t alive. I need to see where that happened, where she changed from one thing to another like that. Do you know what metamorphosis means?”
“Yes, I do,” said Miranda.
“We read stories about metamorphosis in school, stories from Rome a long time ago. And we studied metamorphosis in science. I just want to see where it happened.”
“All right. Tell Victoria I’ll get you back in a couple of hours. We’ll have lunch downtown. Tell her I’ll have you back after lunch.”
When Miranda pulled into the Rosedale garage, she knew Jill had been at Robert Griffin’s before. They were both a little windblown. Jill had insisted they drive with the top down.
Miranda was self-conscious about the Jaguar. She expected Mrs. de Cuchilleros would be watching them from among the ferns in her receiving-room window. As far as the neighbours were concerned, she was a police detective investigating a possible homicide and she was driving the dead man’s car. She hadn’t returned it the previous night, and somehow that made her feel even more truant.
As they had approached, Miranda saw Jill avert her eyes, keeping the house out of her line of vision, then stare up at it abruptly when they turned down the ramp and descended into the depths. Parked, Miranda smoothed her hair back while Jill resolutely got out of the car as if she were obeying a command. Together they raised the top back up into position, and Miranda locked the doors. She started toward the inside entrance, then realized Jill was already striding back up the ramp. She followed her onto the front steps where the girl was pushing at the door.
“It’s locked,” said Miranda.
“I’ve got the keys.” Inside, Jill’s eyes followed the stairs in the direction of the study where her mother had died, but she walked through the hallway to the side, down the stairs into the den, and stopped at the French doors, waiting for Miranda to catch up, looking out through the portico into the garden. Miranda moved beside her, careful to give her enough distance.
“Jill, tell me about it. Why did you want to come here?”
The girl turned to her and stepped back. “To see what it was like.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“No.”
“Jill, you have.”
The girl looked angry and hurt. “What do you want from me?”
“Jill?”
“I can be anything you want.”
“What do you mean?”
“I could be the daughter she wanted. She would see if she came back. I can be his Shiromuji girl if that’s what he wants. I didn’t mean for all this to happen. I can be whatever, whatever.”
Miranda was stunned by her compliant ferocity. “Did he call you that?” Panic rose in her gut.
The girl didn’t answer.
“Did Robert Griffin call you that?”
No answer.
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“Jill …” A great wave of despair rolled through Miranda from deep inside to the surface, where it was quelled by an icy chill, and for a moment she felt nothing at all. She stood very still. Then her skin seemed on fire. “I was there, too …” She didn’t know if she had said that aloud. Miranda touched the girl, and neither of them burned. She took the girl in her arms.
At first they stood stiffly upright, the girl defiant. Then Jill leaned into Miranda, letting her body weight slump against Miranda, and together they sank to the floor, holding each other on the Kurdish runner, swaying gently in a silent embrace, both of them waiting without apprehension for something to happen.
“Jill,” Miranda said after a long time had passed, “I need you to tell me about it.”
“You knew him before?” Jill asked in a conspiratorial whisper. “Like before he died?”
“Yes, I did. I was a girl your age …” She didn’t know how to avoid the euphemism. It was more honest than anything she could think of. “When he came into my life.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Yes, I think he did very much. He hurt me more than I understood, perhaps more than I understand even now.”
They were sitting now, facing each other on the Kurdish runner, hunched forward like girlfriends.
“Did he hurt you, Jill?”
“He hurt my mother. Did you know she worked for him? She had an office and managed his money. Not the money he had invested — you know about that. It was money he used for buying things and running his life. She looked after him.”
“Do you know where her office was?”
“I could find it. It’s over a fancy gallery in Yorkville. I was only there once. That’s when I discovered she called herself Eleanor —”
“You knew at the morgue! Of course you knew.”
“Only after I followed her. I just found out.”
“You followed her?”
“We had a really bad fight. She caught me smoking with my friend Alexandria. She said I couldn’t see Alexandria for a month, like that was worse than being grounded. The fight was about that, more than about smoking. I mean, she knew I wasn’t really a smoker.”
“Did she ever smoke?”
“My mother? Are you kidding? She was death on tobacco. She had what I’d call a counter-addictive personality.”
“You would?”
“No way she’d give up control, not to a vice, not to a pleasure.”
“Where did you come up with ‘counter-addictive’?”
“We looked it up, Alexandria and me. We researched our parents.”
“Okay. So you had a fight. And you skipped school and followed her to work.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I was researching, like I said. There was a picture in the paper. I wasn’t supposed to see it, so I knew it was important. She threw it out without reading it, so I dug it out of the garbage. There was a picture of her with some guy I’d never heard of.”
“Robert Griffin?”
“Yeah. She was in the background, but you could see there was a connection between them. Well, it said she was Eleanor Drummond and she managed the Gryphon Gallery. Surprised much? So I didn’t exactly follow her. I just went there. Anyway, he paid a huge amount of money for a paddle with some writing on it.”
“Rongorongo, does that sound familiar?”
“Yeah, maybe. So suddenly I discover she has a whole other life.”
“To protect you, Jill.”
“A life without me. Maybe it was. I think it was. I think she needed to keep me away from him.”
“What happened?”
The girl glanced over her shoulder toward the corridor into the bathroom and cellars as if she were expecting someone to appear. Then she looked back at Miranda. “He was my father. Did you know that?”
“Yes, I think I did. When did you find out?”
“When I went to my mom’s office … to Eleanor’s Drummond’s.”
“Are