On Wednesday morning, the police released Emmy’s belongings. Will felt a knot in his gut as he climbed the stairs to her apartment. The June sun had pushed the temperature above ninety, aggravating his anxiety-induced nausea. Sour bile pushed its way up his esophagus to the base of his throat. A sudden lack of courage gripped him as he put his key in the front door and turned the knob. The dimly lit hallway, the cracked paint, the musty smell, all so familiar, sought to overwhelm him in the rush of memory and emotion.
      Will forced himself to the stairwell, up to the second floor, down the carpeted hall. Room 214. His hand shook violently as he tried, unsuccessfully, to insert the key into the lock. He stopped, turned his back against the wall next to her door, and took a deep breath.
      “You can do this.” He spoke the words aloud.
      He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled another deep breath of air, then turning, opened the lock and walked in.
      Emmy’s apartment looked like a cliché in a TV detective thriller after the bad guys rip up the hero’s abode, looking for the incriminating floppy disk. In other words, Will thought, not much different than it usually looked. The wry reflection, like a knife, cut into his spleen and twisted.
     He pushed aside some papers on the unmade Murphy bed and sat down. He looked more slowly this time over the large studio apartment and sighed. In the “kitchen” dirty dishes moldered in the sink and let out the stench of rotting food. In one corner —Emmy called it her study— a small aluminum-framed kitchen table from the fifties, covered in a blanket of hand-written notes and dirty dishes, held her battered old computer. Underneath it sat three small boxes of family history, research notes, letters, photos, diaries and scrapbooks from Grandma Emmaline. Nearby, a small bookshelf made of bricks and boards held a variety of history and literature texts. A volume of essays by Wendall Berry lay opened beside it on the hardwood floor. Piles of paper were everywhere, neatly stacked, probably by investigators, who were no doubt very thorough. Emmy’s closet door stood open, clothes hanging haphazard from hooks and hangers.
     A dark green slash across the top of the hangers caught his attention. It was her silk scarf, and it drew him from the bed to the closet. She had worn it the night they had decided to let go of whatever restraints had kept their growing passion for one another at bay. It was a romantic touch added to her usual attire of blue jeans and army surplus jacket. A touch that made her irresistible. He ran his fingers over it; held it to his face; inhaled its essence. He tried to imagine her substance beneath it, the feel of her skin, her lips on his.
     When she brought him here that night, he was riding a wave of euphoria, a man in love. She brushed by him, her green scarf trailing a slight scent of cedar, her touch, as she paused in the doorway, promising unspoken delight as it drew him into her room. Into her arms. They disrobed unselfconsciously, almost frantically. They made love on the floor, unwilling to take the time to lower the Murphy Bed.
     He could almost feel the soft skin of her face against his. And if he opened his eyes, he thought, maybe he would see her, too. But Emmy wasn’t there. Just the scarf, and the smell, and the memory.

     Will didn’t know where to begin with the cleanup. Instead, he walked over to the boxes of research and memorabilia. He went through the cartons in a sort of daze, looking at photos and old newspaper clippings until he felt he would break under the weight of them.
     Eventually, he moved on to the computer, booted it. A sticky note on the corner of the monitor read: “email: Will8593.” His name and the last four digits of his phone number. Security wasn’t one of Emmy’s priorities. A second sticky under the password read: “instant message–jabberwock.”
     When the computer had finished booting, Will dialed up Emmy’s internet connection and logged on to her email account. A half dozen messages. Housing advocacy groups, tenant’s rights, D’Angelo family listserv, and several advertisements for various vague Internet services, come-ons and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Make thousands a week working part-time in the comfort of your own home. No personal messages, no smoking gun, no smoking anything.
     Idly, Will ran the mouse across the icons on the bar at the bottom of the screen. At the far right, a little running figure caught his attention. He clicked. A box that he figured out was a sign-on dialogue appeared. He clicked on the sign-in button. A box entitled “Emmy’s buddy list” appeared. Will began to click through the list —letters and numbers for the most part. He was distracted by a box that popped up, “Edwina wants to chat with you.” Edwina? Surely not the Edwina. Whoever it was they thought they were going to talk to Emmy. Someone who didn’t know she was dead. His hand trembled a little as he clicked yes.
     The message began, “I am Edwina Phillips.” That was all.
     Will leaned back in Emmy’s funky old office chair and stared at the screen, dumbfounded.
     “I’ll be damned,” Edwina Phillips still alive. And on the Internet!
     His fingers twitched over the keys. What could he say to her? Didn’t she know? “Hello, Edwina. I am Will. Emmy isn’t here,” Will wrote.
     “I know. It’s you I want to talk to.”
     “How did you know I would be here?”
     “Who else would be there?”
     She had a point. Who else would be at Emmy’s computer, going through her private world? “Why do you want to talk to me?”
     “Because there are things you need to know. If you are willing to indulge an old woman, perhaps we could have tea. I have an opening this afternoon. Say, around 4:30?”
     Will looked at his watch. It was just after noon. “Tea sounds great and 4:30 is fine. Where?”
     “I’m in St Johns near Cathedral Park. I have a lovely view of the river.” Edwina went on to give him an address and directions and closed her message, “Goodbye.”
     “Wait,” Will wrote, “how long have you been in touch with Emmy?” But Edwina was no longer on line. Will wanted to believe in the possibility that it was Edwina Phillips, more than 100 years old, who was at the other end of the chat connection. He would go and meet her or whoever it was. How dangerous could it be?

     Not at all as it turned out. Edwina greeted him from the doorway of a somewhat declining Victorian house. Her face was crisscrossed with lines, but her eyes were clear and piercing, and she stood straight though her fingers, all knuckles and bones, curled around the head of a wooden cane, shiny from age and use. She motioned him into a sitting room to the left of the entry hall. “Sit right down and make yourself at home.”
     Will settled into a comfortable armchair.
     “That house was full of misfortune.”
     Edwina Phillips poured Will a cup of freshly brewed tea with a remarkably steady hand. She must be at least 105 Will thought and an image of his mother, frail and helpless at eighty came to him. Yet, here was Edwina, still nimble and energetic as she served her guest.
     “That poor woman,” Edwina continued, “Catherine Elizabeth’s great-granddaughter! I can’t believe it! That family has been so unfortunate. It’s that house, I tell you. I’m not a superstitious person, but there’s something about it.”
     “Maybe so,” he said. The old woman’s attention drifted, and Will sat through a moment of awkward silence.
     “So,” he said at last, “Tell me about Catherine Elizabeth. What happened to her?”
     “She was disowned by her family. Became pregnant with Emmaline. She wasn’t married, and of course, in those days, that was a scandal. Her father insisted she have an abortion, or give up the baby secretly, but Catherine would have none of it. Free Love, women’s rights, all of that. We were young and full of these new, liberating ideas. ‘On the edge’ as they say. But, of course, you pay a price if you are courageous about your ideals, don’t you?”
     “Yes,” And just how much would I know about that? Will thought.
     “Did you stay in contact with Catherine?”
     “Yes, for some time. I came back to Portland for a few years in the twenties, but Catherine had changed. She was a single mother. She had to earn her living cleaning house for the nouveau riche. She was too embarrassed to work for the old families whose houses she had visited growing up. Can you imagine that?”
     “It must have been difficult.”
     “It was more than that, young man. We were children of the privileged. Spoiled little Bohemians, playing at being working class poets. We romanticized the struggling masses, but we always knew we had our families’ wealth to fall back on. Privilege is both a blessing and a curse, you know. Catherine wasn’t prepared to give that all up. Still, she did what she had to do”
     “So your paths went different directions.”
     “Yes. Catherine became a recluse. All of her attention went to providing for little Emmaline. I toured with Louise for a time. Champions of the workers’ revolution. Then, when the party needed organizers in Detroit and Chicago in the thirties, I followed the Call. We corresponded for a time, but…you know how it goes.”
     “Her family never forgave her for keeping Emmaline?”
     “No. They were a hard lot, the Bartletts. Snobbish New England prigs. And ruthless business people, as well.”
     “That describes a lot of Portland’s early elite.”
     “Such hypocrisy!” Edwina shook her head. “You know the old man was one of the biggest brothel owners in town. Liked to spend time with his girls, too. So did his son. Two peas in a pod, there.”
     “That would be “Doug Bartlett’s father?”
     “Yes. Anthony Bartlett, Jr. A sorry son of a bitch. His wife, Doug’s mother was killed in a freak accident on the front porch of that house. Columbus Day storm. Nineteen sixty-two. There was a big oak tree in the front yard. Branch snapped off and hit her in the head. The poor woman was mad. He had kept her in that house. Locked up there day and night for years. That would have made anyone crazy, don’t you think?”
     “I see what you mean by misfortune. But it sounds less like luck and more like a terribly dysfunctional family to me.”
     “Yes, you’re right, of course,” said Edwina. “But that wasn’t a term we used.”
     Edwina gazed out the living room window, deep in reflection. Will’s gaze wandered over the room. It was filled with old photos and antique furniture, little touches of history. It was apparent that Edwina had also made sacrifices. This modest home in working class St Johns was at least one or two worlds away from the one she was born to on the southwest side of Portland. Some of the bearings of that other world still clung to Edwina, echoed in her syntax, in her “proper” handling of the tea service.
     Will took Edwina’s silence as an opportunity to make a graceful exit. He put down his empty teacup, and stood.
     “You’re not going already, are you, young man?”
     “I’d love to stay longer, Edwina, but I really have to go.”
     “Well, you come back again. I can tell you some stories that aren’t in any of those history books of yours.”
     “I’d like that,” said Will. He started to hold out his hand to shake hers, but she made no reciprocal motion, so he gave her a small bow. “I’d like that very much.”
     Will walked slowly down to the street, his mind once again on Emmy. He realized that he hadn’t asked Edwina when she had, or if she had, been in touch with Emmy. Next time, Will thought.
     He crossed the St Johns Bridge and followed the Willamette River back to his downtown apartment, past cargo ships laden with Japanese automobiles heading into port and grain ships inching their way toward the mouth of the Columbia.
     He marveled at the changes Edwina had seen in her lifetime. From a time when few people had autos to this time when hundreds of cars arrived daily by ship from Japan. He thought of her in her simple black dress, sitting across from him, her own tea growing cold, while he sipped as carefully as he could from her delicate china. She had arranged shortbread and napoleons on a silver tray, which she kept pressing on him. He touched his tongue to the corner of his mouth and came away with the slightest taste of sugar.