It was a word I particularly disliked, one that had been employed by a number of people over the last two years to describe my situation. “Is that the way you see it?”

“Well.” Norma studied me. “Better a journey than an affliction, right?” She smiled her sunny smile. “So how are things with you? How’s Maddy?”

The moment had arrived, with little effort on my part. Norma was not a friend, but she was warm and wholesome and free from contamination. I’d had friends and I’d lost friends. What I needed was another stranger.

“Maddy didn’t make it,” I said.

“At her age, I’m sure she has other things to do. At least you and Robin are free to come and go.” She wrapped her mug in both hands and looked down at them, thinking, perhaps, of the freedom that she and Tanner might never have.

“No, I mean Maddy didn’t make it. She died last November.”

Norma’s head jerked up.

“She had cancer.”

It was a relief to have said it, to have given it to her to hold; also a triumph, a shame, and a burden. Her light blue eyes filmed with tears. I had turned a coffee morning into a tragic drama, an acquaintance into a confessor. Would I have to carry Norma now too?

She was searching my eyes for a last-minute sign that I was joking, knuckles jammed to her lips. “You didn’t say!”

“It’s not easy!”

“Of course not . . .”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ve got kids. It must be a shocking thing to hear.”

Did I invent these thoughts for her, or did I read them in her eyes and the set of her shoulders, the tiny changes that flickered like light across her features? The desire to know everything. The desire to compare my life to hers. The desire to look away. The desire to rewind time, to withdraw into her own troubles, to never have kayaked over to my dock in the first place, because now she and I were roped together by what I’d told her, and a person as kind as she was would not know how to detach herself.

“In case you’re wondering,” I said, “I’m not crazy.” Norma made a noise but I hurried on. “I don’t particularly believe in anything. Do you? But now I think: Maybe it’s arrogant to be so sure. Who knows if she’s still somewhere? No one does. Even if they think they do. Especially if they think they do.”

Norma nodded mutely.