This time Maggie remembered to exit I-95 before she reached the turnpike. She ended up on Jefferson Davis Highway, and as she crossed the James River she realized she would probably need to do some backtracking to get to her mother’s. Two trips in two days—she should be able to do this without a hitch. After all, she had spent her adolescent years here until she left for good to go to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Yet this city had never felt like home. At that point in her life, no place on earth would have felt like home. No place, that is, without her father.

After his death, Maggie had never understood why her mother insisted they move from Green Bay to Richmond. Why wouldn’t they want to stay in their home surrounded by people who knew and loved them, comforted by the memories? Unless, of course, there had been an affair and gossip, rumors…No, it had to be a lie. She wouldn’t allow the thought, wouldn’t dignify it with…Except why had they moved? Had her mother ever given her a reason?

Kathleen O’Dell had plopped them down in the middle of a strange and unfamiliar place, a place she had never visited nor even heard of before. And her mother’s only explanation…What? What had it been? Something about a fresh start, a new beginning. Right. A fresh start after every failed suicide attempt. So many of them Maggie had stopped counting.

But here she was again, trying to rescue her mother once more.

She pulled up in front of her mother’s apartment building, driving around the huge white paneled truck that took up five prime parking spaces. Several men were loading the truck with furniture while a small gray-haired man propped open the apartment building’s security door. So much for security.

It wasn’t until Maggie walked up the front sidewalk and past the truck that she recognized the flowered love seat the men were shoving into the back. Immediately, she glanced up at her mother’s second-floor apartment and noticed all the curtains gone from the windows. The stab of panic caught her off guard.

“Excuse me.” She stopped the small gray-haired man who seemed to be supervising the move. “I recognize some of these items. What’s going on?”

“Mrs. O’Dell is selling out.”

“You mean moving out?”

“Well, I’m sure she’s moving someplace else, but no, I meant selling out.”

The confusion must have shown on her face, because he went on to explain, “I’m Frank Bartle.” He dug into his jacket pocket and handed her a business card. “Al and Frank’s Antiques and Secondhand Treasures. We’re down on Kirby. If you see something here you like, we’ll have it ready to sell next week.”

“But I don’t understand why she would sell everything. I guess I should go up and ask her myself, rather than bother you.”

“’Fraid you won’t be able to do that.”

“I promise I won’t get in your men’s way.” She smiled and started for the door.

“No, I just meant that she’s not there.”

Now Maggie felt a clammy chill. “Where is she?”

“Don’t know. I was gonna buy a few of her antiques. You know some trinkets, a few figurines and things like that. She gave me a call early this morning and asked if I wanted the whole lot.”

Maggie leaned against the doorjamb. “Where did she go?”

“Don’t know.”

“But she must have left you a forwarding address.”

“Nope.”

“What about payment?”

“I came over this morning. Gave her an estimate and then a check. She gave me a key. Said to hand it in to the landlady when we’re through.”

How could all this happen in less than twenty-four hours? And what had happened to make her mother do this? Or had she planned it and just didn’t tell Maggie? Yesterday there had been quite a few boxes packed and stacked. But why make a production of Thanksgiving dinner if she hadn’t planned on being here? What the hell was going on?

“I have a receipt, if you don’t believe me.” Frank Bartle was digging in his jacket pocket again.

“No, that’s fine.” She stopped him with a wave of her hand. “I believe you. It’s just very strange. I saw her yesterday.”

“Sorry, but that’s all I know,” he said, but his attention wandered to one of the moving men who was coming out of the apartment building. “Be careful with that one, Emile. Put it someplace safe, okay?”

On the side of the carton the man carried Maggie could see scrawled in black marker the single word, Figurines. Her grandmother’s figurines, the one prize possession her mother owned. Suddenly, Maggie felt sick to her stomach. Wherever her mother had gone, she didn’t intend on coming back.