The Guesthouse on Rua das Flores

The next morning, Carol followed the little map down her street, left at the corner, and across a small square to the café marked with an X. Inside, it was small and warm, with five tables, a long counter, and the smell of fresh bread. She took a table near the back, where she could see the door, and waited.

Lobo came in at five past eight. He hung his coat on a hook by the door, and without it he looked smaller and older, more like a retired schoolteacher than a man who walked to blue doors in the middle of the night. She reminded herself not to judge a book by its cover. He sat down across from her and nodded to the owner. A moment later, two coffees arrived without a word, along with a plate of warm bread, cheese, and sliced oranges that Carol hadn't ordered.

"Thank you for coming," he said. "I am glad you came alone."

"You said it was the beginning of an answer." Carol wrapped her hands around the warm cup. "I'm ready to hear it."

Lobo took his time, the way careful people do. "I knew your aunt for thirty years," he said. "I have lived in her house for only two."

Carol had been ready to take nothing he said at face value. Still, there was no smile turning on and off in his voice, the way there was with Costa. There was only a man telling her something he had clearly decided, the night before, to tell.

"What were you doing for the other twenty-eight years?" she asked.

"For twenty-eight of those years, we worked together at a distance." He turned his cup slowly on the table. "Your aunt kept her own housekeeper in the dark for forty years. She did it to protect Rosa, not because she didn't trust her."

"You're not really a guest," Carol said.

"I am really a guest. I pay in cash every Monday. I am also a great deal more than that." He looked at her, steady. "We are going slowly, you and I, because that is the only safe speed."

Carol put down her cup. "So, why did you move into the guesthouse?" she asked.

Lobo was quiet for a moment, choosing his words. "Because she asked me to. All those years, we met only a few times, in careful places. Then she asked me to come and live in the house. She was getting tired. She did not say sick. She said tired." He said the word again, and this time it came out the way a person sets down something heavy. "I think she knew, even then, what was coming. She wanted someone she trusted close by. So, I came."

Carol watched him say it, and she understood that this was harder for him than he wanted her to see. She didn't say so because it wasn't hers to say. Instead, she kept one fact in mind. This man hadn't come to that house for money. He'd come because a tired woman asked him to.

"I still don't understand what any of this means," she said gently. "What were you and my aunt working on?"

"That I cannot tell you yet." He leaned in. "But there is something you must hear first. A warning. Two weeks ago, a man telephoned the house and asked for me by name. Rosa took the call. I have told almost no one where I live. The man said he was calling on behalf of the buyer. That means somebody told them I am here, and somebody is watching this house closely. What has happened so far is only the tip of the iceberg." His eyes did not leave hers. "Be very careful who you speak to, Carolina. Be careful even of people who say they are helping you."

A cold thread of understanding moved through Carol. "You mean Costa."

Lobo didn't answer. He didn't need to. He drank his coffee, and his silence was an answer in itself.

Carol went back to the guesthouse with a lot to think about, and she did what Lobo had taught her without meaning to. She went slowly.

She sat back on her bed to go through the notebook again, page by page, looking only at the pages marked with the little bird. On one of them, under the open wing, was a short list of names. Most meant nothing to her. They were foreign words she couldn't even sound out. She copied them carefully into her phone and searched them one by one, the slow, stubborn way she did everything.

Most of them led nowhere. One was a street, and another was a shop that had closed long ago. Then she came to a name that appeared more than once.

Cardoso.

It was written twice on the bird page, in her aunt's small handwriting. A quick search showed that the Cardoso family was one of the oldest and richest in Lisbon. The other names led to small, ordinary places. This one led to a family with real power.

Then she saw it written a third time, lower on the page, with another word beside it that she knew well. She had seen it that very week on a brass plate on a glass door in the new part of the city.

Costa.

Cardoso and Costa sat side by side in her aunt's private code, written years before Lottie ever went to the hospital. It didn't take long to put two and two together. Carol still didn't know who the buyer was. She did know that her aunt had written Costa's name beside the name of a powerful family, years before Costa ever picked up a phone to call her. The lawyer with the on-and-off smile wasn't a stranger who had simply found a buyer. His name was in her aunt's notebook, tied to the Cardoso name like two threads in the same knot.

Carol was still staring at the screen when she heard the front bell ring downstairs, then Rosa's footsteps, and then a voice she knew. It was smooth and warm, far too warm.

She went to the top of the stairs and looked down. Costa stood in the front hall with his hat in his soft hands, smiling up at her like an old friend.

"Dona Carolina," he said. "I was in the neighborhood. I thought, why speak on a cold telephone when I can speak to a neighbor face to face? May I come up?"

In his office, his smile had turned on and off like a light. Here, in her aunt's warm hall, it stayed on, and that frightened her far more than the switch ever had. He was a wolf in sheep's clothing, and now the wolf was smiling. She thought of the two names tied together on the bird page. She took a slow breath, put on her calmest face, and went down the stairs to meet him.