But Ezekiel, who always took an interest in young people because, he said, we had not been blessed with children of our own, had seen them at that horrible coffee shop near the Greyhound station and brought them into our home. At least he had the good sense not to let them track up our rugs, to bring them through the back door and into the kitchen.

“This is Douglas Frederick,” he said, “and Claudia Frederick. They’re from Dorchester County.” Notice he did not tell me why they shared a surname. So they could have been husband and wife or brother and sister. “They have gotten themselves in a spot of trouble, through no fault of their own, and they felt it was better to leave Cambridge.”

“Hmmmm” was all I said, but I knew what was going on in Cambridge in the summer of 1963.

“Family reasons,” the man put in. He was slick, I saw that right away, but he wasn’t as slick as he thought he was, he was never going to be slick enough to get by Ezekiel Taylor. He had mistaken my husband’s kindness for weakness, whereas the truth about Ezekiel was that he could afford to be kind because he had no weaknesses at all. Well, just the one. It’s in his blood, he can’t help it. When a thing is in your blood, what can you do?

The girl didn’t say anything. She looked as if she were used to menfolk speaking for her, around her, about her. She had pale eyes. Not blue, not green, not hazel. Just pale. If I had to put a color to it, I’d say yellow, as faint as yellow can be, the color of urine when you’re healthy.

Ezekiel picked up the conversational reins. Some men, when they’re trying to get something past you, they talk fast. Not my Ezekiel. He slowed down, let his words roll along, meandering like a stream as if they had no particular place to go. But a stream is busy, a stream has purpose. A stream is full of life and agendas, many of them in conflict. It’s a microcosm, a world. In a stream, there is life and death.

“So I see these two, looking overwhelmed, studying the menu, two little rabbits, counting their money, not enough to buy a decent breakfast between the two of them, he was feeding her bites from his plate, and I thought—we could use a couple around the house to help us out.”

A couple of what? I was thinking.

“A handyman and a live-in girl to do the cooking and the cleaning.”

“I’m a good cook, Ezekiel,” I said. “You like my cooking.”

“I love your cooking, sweetheart. I still want my breakfast to come from your hands, no one else’s, but wouldn’t it free you up if you didn’t have to be the one putting dinner on the table every night?”

Free me up to do what? Free him up to do what?

He can read my mind, my husband, always could. He said: “More time for your church activities and whatever you want to do. I just want to give you the best life I can, Hazel. Let me do this for you.”

The girl was looking down at her lap, where her hands twisted like two squirming animals, something newborn and blind, helpless. They were hard-looking hands, dry and cracked, but they weren’t hardworking hands. I can tell the difference. I was country, too, once upon a time, but it was so long ago people tend to forget, even Ezekiel. He forgets that I was young and sweet and slender, with a downcast gaze and a laughably homemade dress, and that he had never wanted anyone like he wanted me. So he got me. Ezekiel Taylor tends to get what he wants.

But not this time, I decided that day. Not under my roof. I had to draw a line. So I said no to Douglas and Claudia. That was three years ago and I hadn’t given them a thought until I saw that white lady on my front steps and wished I had someone who could answer the door for me and say, “Go away, Mrs. Taylor is resting now.”

I can just not answer the door, I think. No one can make me open my own door. But if I can see her aspect through the lace curtain, she can see mine. Maybe, I think, she’s selling cosmetics. And, like a child, I believe my own wishful thought the moment I express it and by the time I open the door I am surprised that this woman does not have a valise. Ding-dong, Avon calling. Not a lot of Avon women are working Reservoir Hill these days.

“I’m Madeline Schwartz,” she says, bright as a new penny. She’s in her late thirties, a little older than she looked through my etched glass. I’m in my fifties, but I appear much younger than my years. I can pass for my forties, easily. But it was never about being young. Like I said, it’s in his blood.

“Yes?” I don’t tell her my name. If you’re standing on my doorstep, I assume you know who I am, where I stand.

“Is Mr. Taylor home?”

“He is not.” I know how, in three words, to say everything I need to say. And she’s smart enough to hear what isn’t said: And I wouldn’t call him to the door if he was. We do not do business in this house. If you really need to talk to Ezekiel Taylor, you should know that. No business is transacted here, ever, even of the non-financial kind. Not under my roof. You think I let Shell Gordon come to my house? Never. Ezekiel goes to him.

“My name is Madeline Schwartz,” she repeats. “I work for the Star. I’d like to talk to you about the night Cleo Sherwood disappeared.”

“Who?” I say.

“The young woman whose body was found in the lake.”

“Why?”

“She worked at the Flamingo, a place your husband frequents.”

“Hundreds of people frequent the Flamingo, miss.” This woman has not said she is a “miss,” but what proper married woman would ever be on my doorstep, asking about my husband?

“Still, I thought—”

“This is not my husband’s place of business. It is our home. We believe in—” My words falter and she jumps in:

“A strict separation of church and state?”

I understand the reference. I am a well-educated woman. I was, after all, attending Coppin, studying to be a teacher, when I met Ezekiel. But it hits me wrong, the way she says it, almost as if it’s a joke. There is nothing funny about church. Without church, I don’t know who I’d be, how I would go from day to day. Church, specifically, not Jesus. Of course I love Jesus, he gives my life meaning, but the church, its schedule and rituals—the church gives my life shape. Maybe it sounds funny to some, but I see my days as trees, like in the Tarzan movies. Every morning I get up, grab a vine, and hope it’s long enough, my arms powerful enough, to carry me to the next one. I go to church, I change the altar cloths, the seasons pass, the years pass. Christ is born, Christ dies, Christ rises. Again and again and again.

“This is my home,” I say, well aware that I have shifted from our to my. But it’s true. I have absolute domain here. Here, things are proper. Here is under my control. Cleo Sherwood and her ilk have never crossed my threshold. A thought streaks across my mind—what if I had allowed Claudia and her “husband” into the house? What if there had been a baby in here, after all? Maybe she would have given it to me, let me have it. A baby could have changed everything. EZ wanted babies.

“I came to talk to you. Specifically about what you and your husband did New Year’s Eve. Was he here with you? The whole night?”

But I am shutting my door. Slowly, majestically. I want her to glimpse the world behind me, the beautiful rooms, the fine antiques, some of them French. God did not give me children, so I have made our home—our home, Ezekiel, yours and mine, the place you come back to, eventually, every night or early morning—a blessed place, a beautiful place. I keep a fine house, I set a fine table, I make good meals. I listen to the radio, I am up on the news. I have done everything that a man can ask a woman to do, other than give him children. He has forgiven my body’s shortcomings, so I forgive his.

That bold piece lingers on my doorstep for a minute or so, rings the bell a second time, as if her first conversation with me was a dress rehearsal. It was not. We are done.

It’s not my fault that Cleo Sherwood was a careless young woman who couldn’t stay alive. It’s not my fault. Ezekiel doesn’t even realize that I knew she existed. And if I didn’t know she was alive—and isn’t pretending someone doesn’t exist the same as not knowing they’re alive?—then how can I know anything about how she died?

Maybe I should have let them stay, Douglas and Claudia. Maybe everything would have been different. She could have been a daughter to me. She was country, poor and rough, but I was country, too, once upon a time. Now look at me. I have beautiful clothes and pearls, a house full of satin and brocade and velvet. Maybe if I had been content to let these things happen under my roof, I could have kept everyone safe.

But I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. A lady has her limits. That’s part of what makes one a lady, knowing her limits, respecting them. Whatever Cleo Sherwood was to my husband, she was not and never could be a lady. She was never going to be his wife, and I don’t care what she ran around blabbing to people. She was deluded.

And now she’s dead.

You went to her door, rang the bell.