I realize the ID found near her body might not be hers, but when I met her she sounded British, possibly from London, and my stomach clenches harder. I feel a sense of urgency that’s personal. As if I knew the woman who’s been killed. As if I might be one of the last people she ever spoke to or saw. And I will myself to control my thoughts.

I can’t say for a fact whose dead body is in the park or how the death occurred or why, I remind myself. I open the door and step out into the dark oven of the patio, where no one is sitting in the stifling night air. I follow the walkway, looking all around me with every step I take. I listen for the quiet nocturnal sounds of insects, of birds lifting off branches in a startled burst, their wings whistling.

I listen for the creaking of old trees, the rustle of leafy canopies or chirp of a katydid. But it’s dead quiet except for traffic that gusts like the wind, rushing, then lagging before it picks up again. I’m aware of the solid roughness of the bricks beneath my softly tapping shoes, mindful of the thick static air and the bright bug eyes of vehicles on Quincy Street.

I pass the same foliage and rockery I did earlier when I was with Benton, but it seems I’m on another planet now, surrounded by unfamiliar voids of lawn, and hulking dark shapes and shadows. Nothing moves except traffic beyond the split-rail paling silhouetted ahead. I can see the libraries sleepily lit up across the street in the Yard, where I was walking not even an hour and a half ago. I reach the sidewalk, and Marino’s SUV is parked at the curb behind Benton’s Audi.

It seems like déjà vu as I climb in and stare at the rear of my husband’s blacked-out Batmobile illuminated in the glare of headlights. Only he’s not in it now, and I feel a pang of loneliness as I see the empty dark space where he was sitting behind the wheel, watching us in the rearview mirror but a very short time ago.

Benton is still inside the Faculty Club, and I continue watching for him to emerge from the red front door, to see him illuminated in the entrance light as he steps outside and follows the walkway. But there’s no sign of him. He must still be on the phone, and it enters my mind that in the midst of all this chaos he has to take care of banal matters such as paying for a dinner we didn’t get to eat. I didn’t think of asking for the check. I simply walked out.