I see the pain, but have no help to offer. I am an outsider, a voyeur looking on after the crash, after the fire, after the shooting. I am part of the screaming sirens, the stretching of the yel ow tape, the zipping of the body bag.

I cannot diminish the overwhelming sorrow. And I hate my impotence.

Feeling like a coward, I turned into the family room.

Two women sat side by side, together but not touching. The younger could have been thirty or fifty. She had pale skin, heavy brows, and curly dark hair tied back on her neck. She wore a black skirt and a long black sweater with a high cowl that brushed her jaw.

The older woman was so wrinkled she reminded me of the dried-apple dol s crafted in the Carolina mountains. She wore an ankle-length dress whose color fel somewhere between black and purple. Loose threads spiraled where the top three buttons should have been.

I cleared my throat.

Apple Granny glanced up, tears glistening on the face of ten thousand creases.

“Mrs. Ferris?”

The gnarled fingers bunched and rebunched a hanky.

“I’m Temperance Brennan. I’l be helping with Mr. Ferris’s autopsy.”

The old woman’s head dropped to the right, jolting her wig to a suboptimal angle.

“Please accept my condolences. I know how difficult this is for you.”

The younger woman raised two heart-stopping lilac eyes. “Do you?”

Good question.

Loss is difficult to understand. I know that. My understanding of loss is incomplete. I know that, too.

I lost my brother to leukemia when he was three. I lost my grandmother when she’d lived more than ninety years. Each time, the grief was like a living thing, invading my body and nesting deep in my marrow and nerve endings.

Kevin had been barely past baby. Gran was living in memories that didn’t include me. I loved them. They loved me. But they were not the entire focus of my life, and both deaths were anticipated.

How did anyone deal with the sudden loss of a spouse? Of a child?

I didn’t want to imagine.

The younger woman pressed her point. “You can’t presume to understand the sorrow we feel.” Unnecessarily confrontational, I thought. Clumsy condolences are stil condolences.

“Of course not,” I said, looking from her to her companion and back. “That was presumptuous of me.” Neither woman spoke.

“I am very sorry for your loss.”

The younger woman waited so long I thought she wasn’t going to respond.

“I’m Miriam Ferris. Avram is…was my husband.” Miriam’s hand came up and paused, as if uncertain as to its mission. “Dora is Avram’s mother.” The hand fluttered toward Dora, then dropped to rejoin its counterpart.