“He thought I was plotting to leave him, run away with someone else. Whenever I got a letter, or a phone call, or came home five minutes late from work or the store, he’d be sitting there, waiting for me. He was always trying to catch me in a lie. I felt like I was under surveillance all the time. I just, I finally got tired of it—I started standing up to him. That was it, I guess. He couldn’t take it anymore. I think he really wanted me to die.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I said. I realized, with surprise, that I was crying. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried.

“You know the really sad part?” she said. “I didn’t want to leave him. I was never plotting anything. I wanted to grow old with him. There was never anyone else.”

We would never, not one of us, tell the same story. We would never see the same truth. In that way, there was no escaping loneliness.

Before Emily left I asked her about my mom, if she thought Cole knew my mom at all.

“Her name was Cecily,” I said. “And I found a letter from her in his suitcase. He said he knew her, that she believed he was Baby B.”

“He had a friend who was an older woman,” she said. “I don’t think I ever knew her name. It could have been your mom. He said they understood each other because they both understood losing someone, and she was the only person he knew who had lost something big enough to—you know—ruin your life.”

“But everyone has lost things.” My mother felt irretrievably lost to me. I would never know the truth of what happened that night on the ferry, if she’d meant to kill Baby B, if she’d meant to kill herself. It was terrible not knowing, but sometimes I thought it would be worse to know.

“He never thought other people’s griefs were as real as his,” Emily said. “Except hers, this woman. He said she found him, that she used to watch him when he was a little boy, and that was how she knew about his grief. He said they’d been friends since he was thirteen. His parents never knew.”

“That was her.”

“People are weird,” Emily said. “Love does weird things to people and so does grief. I still miss him. Every day. He tried to kill me, and I still miss him. I still think about walking home from the movies with him holding hands. I know I’m crazy, but I can’t help it.”