“I’m so sorry,” Harry said. “We don’t . . .” He trailed off.

Caitlin looked up at him, took a deep breath, and said, “No, it’s fine. I get these waves, almost like I realize all over again that she’s really gone, and they just, they just . . .”

“I know. I get the same thing with my father. Like how is it possible that I’ll never speak to him again? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she said, her voice back to normal.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. At least with my father . . . he was older. I didn’t expect him to die, but we always assume our parents will die before us.”

The waitress appeared, refilling Harry’s coffee and asking Caitlin if she wanted anything. She didn’t, really, but asked for a cup of tea.

“Thanks again for meeting me here,” Caitlin said, wanting to get the conversation back on track.

“It’s fine. I know you’re probably going to want to hear if I know how Grace died, and I really don’t.”

“You found her, I heard.”

“I did. I’d seen her the night before, and the next morning I went back to the house she was staying at to check on her, and . . . I was the one who called the police.”

Caitlin wondered, not for the first time, why Harry, who had seen her last, and who had found her body, was not being held as a suspect. Although seated across from him now, seeing the gutted look in his eyes, she didn’t think he had had anything to do with Grace’s death.

Her tea arrived. Caitlin added sugar and took a sip. She said: “The detective seemed to think that whoever killed your father also killed my sister.”

“Is that what he said to you?”

“He did. What do you think?”

“I guess that’s what I think, too. But I don’t really know, and, honestly, I feel like I’ve been in shock since coming back up here to Maine. I believed Grace, though. She was convinced that my stepmother had something to do with my father’s death. That’s why she was here.”

“I know. You think she was right?”

“Well, no. When I said I believed her, I guess what I meant was that I believed that she really believed my stepmother had killed my father. She was sure of it. I don’t know what to think myself.”

“How’s your stepmother now?”

Harry scratched his jaw. “She’s upset. I’m still staying with her. She says that there’s a woman my father was involved with—another woman besides your sister—and that she was the one who killed my father, and now she thinks she killed your sister because she was with my father as well.”

“Who’s this woman?”