real McCoy. He almost reached out and touched her to make sure. "Thank you," he said.

"This is our daughter Sarah's wedding. She was married four years ago."

"I see."

"It was a very special day for us."

"I'm sure."

"We had it at the Manor in West Orange. You know it?"

"I was bar mitzvahed there," Myron said.

"Really? Your parents must have very fond memories of the day."

"Yes." But now he wondered. I mean, Mom and Dad kept most of the photos in an album.

Mrs. Palms smiled at him. "It's odd, I know, but... oh, I've explained this a thousand times. What's one more?" She sighed, signaled to a couch. Myron sat. She did likewise.

Mrs. Palms folded her hands and looked at him with the blank stare of a woman who sat too close to life's big screen. "People take pictures of their most special times," she began too earnestly. "They want to capture the important moments. They want to enjoy them and savor them and relive them. But that's not what they do. They take the picture, they look at it once, and then they stick it in a box and forget about it. Not me. I remember the good times. I wallow in them-re-create them, if I can. After all, we live for those moments, don't we, Myron?"

He nodded.

"So when I sit in this room, it warms me. I'm surrounded by one of the happiest moments in my life. I've created the most positive aura imaginable."

He nodded again.

"I'm not a big art fan," she continued. "I don't relish the idea of hanging impersonal lithographs on the walls. What's the point of looking at images of people and places I don't know? I don't care that much about interior design. And I don't like antiques or phony-baloney Martha Stewart stuff. But do you know what I do find beautiful?" She stopped and looked at him expectantly.

Myron picked up his cue. "What?"

"My family," she replied. "My family is beautiful to me. My family is art. Does that make sense to you, Myron?"

"Yes." Oddly enough, it did.

"So I call this Sarah's Wedding Room. I know that's silly. Naming rooms. Blowing up old photographs and using them as wallpaper. But all the rooms are like this. Billy Lee's bedroom upstairs I call the Catcher's Mitt. It's where he still stays when he's here. I think it comforts him." She raised her eyebrows. "Would you like to see it?"

"Sure."

She practically leaped off the couch. The stairwell was plastered with giant, seemingly old black and whites. A stern-faced couple in wedding gear. A soldier in full uniform. "This is the Generational Wall. That's my great-grandparents over there. And Hank's. My husband. He died three years ago." I m sorry.

She shrugged. "This stairwell goes back three generations. I think it's a nice way of remembering our ancestors."

Myron didn't argue. He looked at the photograph of the young couple, just starting out their life together, probably a little scared. Now they were dead.

Deep Thoughts by Myron Bolitar.

"I know what you're thinking," she said. "But is it any stranger than hanging oils of dead relatives? Just more lifelike."

Hard to argue.

The walls in the upstairs corridor featured some sort of costume party from the seventies. Lots of leisure suits and bell-bottoms. Myron didn't ask, and Mrs. Palms didn't explain. Just as well. She turned left and Myron trailed her into the Catcher's Mitt. It lived up to its billing. Billy Lee's baseball life was laid out like a Hall of Fame display room. It started with Billy Lee in Little League, squatting in his catcher's stance, his smile huge and strangely confident for so young a child. The years flashed by. Little League to Babe Ruth League to high school to Duke, ending with his one glorious year with the Orioles, Billy Lee proudly showing off his'World Series ring. Myron studied the Duke photographs. One had been taken out in front of Psi U, their frat house. A uniformed Billy Lee had his arm around Clu, plenty of frat brothers in the background, including, he saw now, him and Win. Myron remembered when the picture had been taken. The baseball team had just beaten Florida State to win the national championship. The party had lasted three days.

"Mrs. Palms, where is Billy Lee?"

"I don't know."

"When you say you don't know-"

"He ran off," she interrupted. "Again."

"He's done this before?"

She stared at the wall. Her eyes were glassy now. "Maybe Billy Lee doesn't find this room comforting," she said softly. "Maybe it reminds him of what