Too stunned to delve into anything real with Elliott, too rattled to formulate something sensible, I said, “You shaved.” Oh, how I wished he hadn’t. Because his bare face was even more handsome. And I was kicking myself because that was all I could find to say to him, to this man I had cried into my pillow over for months.

“I had forgotten how beautiful you are,” he said.

I realized that maybe Elliott wasn’t winning any bright things to say to your ex competitions either. But I felt a blush coloring my cheeks all the same. Elliott could do that to me, make me feel girlish. I fell in love with him too quickly; I wanted a future with him right away. And that was why I had to let him go. Because maybe what everyone said was true: I had killed three men I loved. I couldn’t kill a fourth.

After the first two deaths, I had joined a support group for mourners. By the time I lost Walter, I felt like I had memorized the program. I was embarrassed to go back there again. I wondered if this was what it felt like when alcoholics fell off the wagon, got back on, and had to start AA from scratch. It wasn’t their fault; they were fighting a lifelong battle with a hideous illness. But in both situations, going back again and again presented some sort of element of failure. I had once again failed to keep a husband alive.

If I had gone back to that widows’ support group I felt like I was flunking, I never would have met Elliott. Unable to haul myself into the converted gas station that held the group every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I had instead taken my lonely heart to the brewery across the street for a beer. I had sat, feeling numb, wondering how a woman could even begin to make a start after so many losses.

Elliott had walked in that cold, dreary Wednesday night in February, when the island’s population was at its lowest, with a full beard and a flannel shirt tucked into his jeans. I didn’t consider him all that much. I wasn’t in a place to. But we were the only people in the bar, and, once he got his beer, he sat right beside me.

“Is this seat taken?” he asked.

“Only by all my ghosts,” I said in the most macabre voice I could muster. I didn’t necessarily want him to leave, but I wanted to be clear that I wasn’t in a Susie Sorority mood. I wasn’t going to give him some friendly, chatty banter and leave him with a smile—or end up in his bedroom.

As he settled onto the stool, he said, “There’s room for them and for me.”