As I walk, it dawns on me that Page’s reasons for being here are vague. She said she was handling Odilie’s legal matters, the house, all of that. But she didn’t explain what that meant exactly or why she would be the one qualified to do it. Not that it’s any of my business. But maybe it is, maybe a little bit. I’d googled her name, too, to try to find out more about her career, her aspirations, and there was not much, aside from her relation to her sister. Her LinkedIn said she had worked for a realty developer outside Detroit.

Brooklyn is humming with activity. It’s a beautiful May evening, the weather hovering at around seventy degrees. People are seated at tables scattered outside restaurants, drinking and chatting. There’s a positive charge in the air, a casualness that is so inherent to New York in the springtime. Anything could happen; the evening could blur into a party; two strangers could meet while ordering at the same bar; acquaintanceships could be forged.

This sense of contentment gives me a surge of optimism as I walk toward Cobble Hill. It was this sense of wonder, of anticipation, I realize, that made last spring, before everything happened, feel so full of possibilities. Why I so easily agreed to those dates with Tom, fell so quickly for his overbearing charm. I was seeking sensation, growth and novel experiences after a long, dreary winter.

I finally reach the brownstone, three stories tall with a Black Lives Matter sign in the window, well-maintained flower boxes. It’s friendlier than Tom’s was, aside from the blatant virtue signaling of its white proprietors. I approach the doorbell, pearly white, somehow completely impervious to the city grime.

Page answers quickly, as if she’s been waiting inside the door for my arrival. “Vera! Welcome!” She embraces me tightly, a choke hold. She wears a simple V-neck T-shirt, the cups of a poorly fitted bra’s underwire visible under the translucent cotton, and denim cutoffs, the cheap fabric unspooling in long white threads at the cuffs.

“Come in, come in. I bought some wine and I already know where to order pizza from.” She leads me into a modern-looking, open-plan living area with floor-to-ceiling windows. It’s almost loftlike in its design, the ceilings rising so high I’d have to crane my neck to see the recessed lighting there. Page has kept the curtains drawn, drowning the room in artificial darkness. When she moves into the kitchen, she is in shadow for a moment, blending into the dim corners of the room, forcing me to fumble my way after her.

As promised, Page has put out a frosty bottle of Reisling with two glasses, an ironstone plate with cheese and crackers and charcuterie artfully arranged in a pinwheel, on a large kitchen table with a bouquet of spider chrysanthemums bristling in the middle. Page pours me a glass.