We headed into South Boston, Phil doing the driving. Along the way, I had him stop at one of the local Italian delis for fresh pastries. It seemed the hospitable thing to do, given we were intruding on a now elderly woman’s life to talk about a time she most likely had spent the past thirty years trying to forget.

Now Brenda opened the door of her run-down triple-decker, blinking her eyes against natural daylight, though in fact the sun was setting, the day drawing to a close.

“Dr. Adeline Glen,” she said immediately.

Mrs. Davies seemed to have shrunk since the last time we’d met. Her rounded frame was hunched, her gray hair sticking out, giving her a bristly look in her floral green housecoat. I introduced her to the detectives. She nodded respectfully but was already wringing her hands.

I handed over the box of pastries. Her faded blue eyes sparked in appreciation; then she led us down the dark hall of her bottom-level unit to the family room that occupied the rear of the narrow triple-decker. She gestured to a faded brown love seat, then busied herself fussing over stacks of papers that crowded the top of the coffee table. She moved the pile to the floor, where it joined many similar piles. Both Phil and D.D. were looking around cautiously.

I remembered Brenda Davies’s home as being cluttered six years ago. Now she was venturing into hoarding territory. The loss of her foster children? The void created when her husband died, and she now faced the waning days of her life all alone?

I looked around the overflowing kitchen, the cramped family room, and I already felt sorry for the questions we would be asking this nice woman. She’d been one of the good foster homes. Proud of it, too. That was why they’d sent my sister to her and her husband. Except instead of helping my sister find her happily-ever-after, they’d simply become more debris left behind in Shana’s wake, the murder of Donnie Johnson destroying their standing in the neighborhood, not to mention their faith in their work.

It occurred to me that maybe Charlie Sgarzi was onto something. The full story of that one murder had yet to be explored. All the lives it had impacted. Brenda Davies’s. The Johnsons’. Their extended family, the Sgarzis’. My sister’s. And now my own.

One terrible act. So many ripples in the aftermath.

“Coffee, tea?” Mrs. Davies asked. She’d been busy in the kitchen, moving around stacks of dirty dishes, empty jugs of water, until she seemed to have found one clean plate. She loaded the collection of cream puffs, cannoli and macaroons onto it, then carefully carried the platter toward the coffee table, feet shuffling.

Phil graciously took the plate from her. He and D.D. declined coffee. Then, given her crestfallen expression, recanted and agreed coffee would be lovely.