“You should come to Maine more often,” his father had told him recently. They’d been browsing through some of the recent arrivals at the Housing Works Bookstore in Soho. “Alice would like it.”

Bill rarely mentioned her name, as though doing so somehow tainted the memory of Harry’s deceased mother.

“I’ll come this summer,” Harry said. “How is she?”

“The same,” his father said. “Too young for me, probably.” He paused, then added: “She’s a loyal woman. I’ve been lucky, twice, you know.”

The room—Harry’s room—was nearly the same as it had been when Alice had first decorated it, three years earlier. The major difference being that the empty bookcase she’d originally provided—“You can leave some of your favorite books here, Harry”—had been filled with a number of his father’s first edition crime paperbacks, and the top of the bookcase had been covered with framed photographs, probably selected by Alice. Most were of Harry and his father, but one was a picture of his parents that he’d never seen before, back when they’d first met, sometime in the early 1980s, sitting together on a balcony, each with a cigarette perched between their fingers. They were roughly the age Harry was now, and yet they looked older somehow, more sophisticated. Harry felt like he’d just barely left adolescence and knew that he looked that way as well. He was tall and very thin, with dark, thick hair that flopped over his forehead. Kim had affectionately called him “beanpole.” At parties, random girls sometimes told him how much they envied his cheekbones and eyelashes.

“Harry.” It was Alice, just outside the door. She had whispered his name and he jumped a little at the sound. “Sorry. I didn’t know if you’d want tea or coffee so I brought both.” She stepped into the room, a mug in each hand. “They each have milk and sugar. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Thank you, Alice. It is.” He took the coffee, not planning on drinking much, since what he really wanted to do was sleep. Being at the house had already exhausted him. “Is it okay if I take a nap? I didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Of course it is,” Alice said, backing away. “Sleep as long as you want.”

After shutting the door, he took a sip of the coffee, then removed his shoes and belt and slid under the plaid comforter, his mind filling with unwanted images of his father in his final moments. Had he died instantly without any knowledge of what was happening? Maybe he’d had a heart attack or a stroke, and that had caused him to fall?