“I see her,” Evie said dreamily.
“You do?” Sam’s voice was so hopeful.
“She’s lovely, Sam. Truly.”
Evie breathed in and out, letting herself go under by degrees, getting more of a picture. The first memory was small and simple: A very young Sam sat beside his mother as she stroked a hand across his hair. There were few things more powerful than a mother’s love, and that’s what Evie felt here: No matter what Miriam Lubovitch had told those men, she loved her son very much. As much as Evie’s mother had loved James, which was infinitely more than she’d ever loved Evie. It wasn’t true that parents didn’t have favorite children. They did, and Evie had not been it. The pain of that memory reached through the booze and squeezed a fist around Evie’s heart, threatening to derail the reading. In defiance, she pushed deeper into the photo’s secret history.
Now she saw a beautiful room with marble floors, heavy crystal chandeliers throwing off prisms of light, and walls hung with expensive-looking portraits of expensive-looking people. There were children in the room. Some sat at tables drawing pictures or answering questions. Some fussed with their collars. One little girl played with her doll.
But where was Sam? Was he here?
And then she saw young Sam seated at a table in a corner, his mother standing just behind his chair, looking nervous. Across from Sam sat Will’s long-dead fiancée, Rotke Wasserman. She drew a card from a deck, hiding its face. “Let’s try one more time. Sam, can you tell what card I’m holding?”
“Um, Five of… Clubs?”
“Why don’t you try again,” Rotke urged.
“King of Hearts?” little Sam lisped from a mouth with a front tooth missing. “Jack of Diamonds!”
Rotke smiled at Sam but shook her head at his mother.
“Am I in trouble?” Sam asked.
“Nyet, bubbeleh,” his mother said, kissing him on the cheek. “Go out and play.”
The memory blurred around the edges, and Evie leaned into it. Children played on the grass on a stretch of perfectly manicured lawn. It was a beautiful spring day, and their joy was infectious. But one child was crying. Evie followed the sound to the girl with the doll.
“What’s the matter, Maria?” Rotke asked, crouching before the child.