Stafford. It was not a happy place to grow up, I’m afraid. Too many ghosts.” Selena Haley had the somewhat forced vivacity of a woman just past her prime and all too aware of it. She was still a beautiful woman but she did not glow. I knew she had just turned forty, but forty had been less kind to her than to other women. And she was tired. Tired enough that I could only assume that some malady—either physical or mental—was the cause. “It’s a beautiful property,” I said. She gave a soft laugh. “And a hideous house.” “With a great view. The whole Sound laid out like that—from Stamford over in Connecticut to that lighthouse back toward the city. Impressive.” Her apartment was impressive also. Two floors on Fifth Avenue, views of the park and the Met, lots of mid-twentieth-century American art on the walls, including an Edward Hopper that I had once seen in a retrospective in Paris.
