Only a few minutes passed before Erica and Rozie heard a shrill squeal and laughter—Sophie or Willow. A man cursed when Conrad discovered him. It was so loud and clear that Rozie guessed it was in the room below. Then footsteps stomped up the stairs to the third floor.

  The sound, the performance, reminded Rozie of her little brother, Nelis. He would stamp about, calling her name, trying to startle her into revealing herself. From what she knew of him, it wasn’t hard to imagine Conrad putting on the same act.

  Just as the footsteps reached the top step—the sharp crack of dress shoes on wood—they stopped. She pictured Conrad there, peering about, waiting to see if anyone peeked out of their hiding place. Hunted. She shuddered at the thought. Rozie rolled her wrists one at a time while hunching her aching back. The baby threatened to drag her to the floor, but she held firm. Wood creaked in the hall, and her ears twitched at the sound of rustling. Then nothing.

  Erica raised an eyebrow. Just as she pushed up from her hands to peer over the top of the sofa, Rozie rested a hand on her shoulder. The floor joists vibrated. Erica’s eyes widened in realization. She put her head next to Rozie’s.

  “He took off his shoes,” she said in a whisper. Rozie nodded.

  Someone yelped in the room next door. While Conrad laughed, Rozie recognized Alfie’s tirade of English and Spanish curses. Until that moment, she didn’t realize that Alfonso had followed so close behind them. Erica put her finger to her lips. Alfonso stalked through the hall and down the stairs. Then again, silence.

  The floorboards bowed faintly. The ambient sound of the room changed as the large man stood in its center. He waited so long that his cologne drifted through the air to Rozie’s nose—a sharp Old World musk.

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  Rozie lowered herself and peered beneath the old sofa with a single eye. Socked feet stood motionless in the room, toes aimed away from her at the opposite wall. When she lifted herself back up, she saw the question written on Erica’s face. Rozie tilted her head in Conrad’s direction, eyebrows raised as if to say, he’s still there.

  Vibrations thrummed up her hands with the faint shuffle of fabric. Again they waited. Rozie’s triceps burned, and her elbows shook. She grimaced and lowered herself one more time to look in the gap beneath the chair.

  “Boo!”

  Rozie shrieked. Conrad grinned at her from beneath the sofa, head nearly upside down as he peered back at her. He chuckled.

  “And is that Erica I see? Two for one?”

  Erica sprang to her feet, dusting her hands and the front of her dress. Rozie struggled upward, feeling every drop of blood pound as it plummeted down to her feet. Little Lowry jabbed an elbow into her pubic bone, and she groaned. Erica grabbed her hand and helped Rozie up and out of the hiding place.

  “Well, that means Erica is it for the next round. Everyone else is waiting in the parlor,” Conrad said merrily. The miasma of his cologne couldn’t mask his wine-soaked breath as it filled the space between the three of them.

  Conrad bounded out the parlor door, shoes dangling from his fingers. Erica followed. Rozie worked her way out from behind the sofa. Once free, she bent at the waist to loosen up the perpetually tight muscles of her back. Her eyes fell on a small black-and-white photograph. She stumbled across the room.

  In it, a man sat rigidly in a tall wooden chair. His bushy goatee hid most of his thin lips. A stiff white collar encircled his neck, hidden beneath a large vest and coat that swallowed his slight form. His bright, pale eyes gazed into the camera. Just above the gilded frame, his hands rested on a cane. Almost as striking as his stare was the polished ring he wore. It glistened, even in the sepia tone of the picture. She gazed at the ring. Chords of finely wrought metal wound around his finger in a tight weave.

  “You coming?” Erica called from the doorway.

  Rozie stared into the man’s eyes one last time before following.

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