“Be there in a sec.”

She kissed me, scooped up her cell, and went downstairs.

Last evening, when I walked into this house, I had expected to feel haunted, but Glenna was right: it was comforting. I didn’t see any ghosts, just the long, jagged arc of my life. I tried to draw strength from that vision, that I had forged ahead following that arc as best I could.

Yet as I sat in the window seat, recalling the hours I’d spent admiring the view, listening for trains, and waiting for Glenna, and now trying to persuade myself that I was simply waiting for Alex, I couldn’t muster any strength from my past, because in some dreary recess of my soul I believed that despite our night of passion, I was no closer to holding on to Glenna than I’d been on that afternoon when I’d interviewed her in the cafeteria at Columbia Presbyterian.

I took one last look at the view. Snow was falling, and the flakes vanished into the dark water of Spuyten Duyvil Creek.

Chapter 33

ELAINE AND CHARLIE lived in a redbrick, Federal-style house with rolling lawns, a hilly circular drive, and an ornately leaded fanlight over the front door. My brother-in-law, who owned a string of Subway restaurants and Dunkin’ Donuts between Boston and the Cape, was at work, but Elaine, after hugging and kissing me and welcoming Glenna as if she were her long-lost college roommate, served us oolong tea and banana bread warm from the oven. Like Glenna, Elaine offered hope for women nearing the outer ring of middle age. Her short, stylishly cut hair was now completely silver, though she was as willowy as she’d been in high school, with legs that would have been at home on a fashion runway, and her voice had the same throaty timbre that used to make my friends blush when Elaine, so benevolent to anyone in her younger brother’s orbit, would treat us to ice cream sundaes at Jahn’s—our reward, she said, for being the cutest, coolest boys in Brooklyn.

When I’d called my sister to tell her that Glenna was coming, I’d told her that there was no word on Alex, so as we sat in the kitchen I was spared that conversation. Even so, after Elaine suggested that we take a walk to Belmont Center and Glenna went to the guest room to retrieve her sweater, my sister sent a chill down my spine by saying, “My family’s your family, Gordie, and we’re always here for you.” Elaine was a social worker with a busy private practice; like our mother, she rarely spoke to hear herself talk; and her comment, I suspect, was not only meant to be reassuring, but to encourage me to prepare myself for bad news about Alex.

The temperature was in the high thirties and the walk was pleasant, with Elaine and Glenna striding ahead of me, discussing the virtues of spinning classes versus Pilates and the challenges of collecting reimbursements from insurance companies—a task, they agreed, better left to bone-breakers from the Mob. The Christmas lights were still up, and as my sister and Glenna window-shopped, I sat on a bench, fiddling with my iPhone until I got rid of the chirping ringtone that set my teeth on edge.