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exchanged, there was the excited chatter about plans and when and where. But later in my sister’s bedroom while Marcus, Erik, and the kids tried out a new computer game Marcus was testing, Linda and I had the real conversation. I knew it was coming, of course, I’d seen her shoulders tense, noticed the brittle quality to her smile, the worried eyes.
    “When it’s right, you know,” I said with a shrug. “Right?”
    That’s when she started to cry, just tear a little, really. But still, it was enough to cause disappointment, and not a little anxiety, to wash over me.
    “I thought you liked him,” I said, sinking onto the bed beside her.
    “Izzy” she said, raising her eyes to the ceiling, then lowering them to mine. She took my hand. “He’s just so … cold. There’s something unavailable about him, something distant.”
    I shook my head. “You just need to get to know him better,” I told her. “That’s all. It’s a cultural difference.” But there was a hard knot in my middle.
    She nodded and tried to smile. “Just take your time with the wedding. You get to know him a little bit more before you dive in.”
    I felt a lash of anger then. “You know what I think, Linda?”
    “Don’t,” she said, lifting her hand.
    “I think you don’t really want me to be happy in a relationship.”
    “Stop it, Isabel.”
    I lowered my voice to a whisper. I didn’t want everyone else to hear. “I think you’re happier when I’m unhappy . That you’re more comfortable when I’m alone so that you can be the one with everything—the great career, the perfect family.”
    “That’s bullshit,” she spat, “and you know it. You know I’m right. That’s why you’re so angry. Christ, Isabel, he’s just like our father.”
    If I didn’t love my sister so much, I would have slapped her. Instead, I got up and walked out of the room.
    “Izzy” she called after me. I heard apology in her voice but I didn’t care. I told Marcus I wasn’t feeling well and we left soon thereafter.
    I didn’t talk to my sister for almost two weeks—which felt more like two years. Eventually, she called to borrow a pair of shoes and things went back to normal—no apologies, no discussion, no resolution, just water under the bridge. Marcus and I were married six months later in a small church up in Riverdale near my mother and stepfather’s home. An intimate gathering of my family and friends followed. Marcus didn’t have anyone to invite. At the time, it didn’t really seem strange or sad. I don’t recall thinking about it. We were happy; that was the only important thing.



5
    D etective Grady Crowe stepped out onto Seventh Avenue, leaving St. Vincent’s Hospital. He pulled his leather coat together and brought the zipper up beneath his chin, took the black knit cap from his pocket and slid it over his close-cropped hair.
    It was rush hour. The streets were packed even downtown with people hustling back and forth, huddled against the frigid air. It was a Village crowd, hipper, more casual than what he’d see if he’d found himself in Midtown at this hour. Messenger bags slung across chests instead of briefcases gripped in tight fists, leather instead of cashmere, denim instead of gabardine.
    He’d always liked the lower part of Manhattan best. He considered it more the real New York than Midtown, but less the real city than, say, Brooklyn. Shop windows glittered with Christmas decoration, horns sang in the bumper-to-bumper river of traffic on the avenue. In the air he could smell the wood of someone’s fireplace burning. He always liked that smell, especially in the city. It made the streets seem less hard, less impersonal when you could imagine someone cozy at the hearth, maybe drinking a cup of tea.
    He weaved his way across Twelfth Street through the stopped traffic toward the waiting unmarked Caprice. Exhaust billowed from behind, glowing red in the parking lights. His partner sat talking on her cell phone, her