Maybe, he said. He didn’t know.

In a purple coat? I asked and he said again he didn’t know. Then he looked at me in a way I didn’t really want to be looked at, questioning something, so I didn’t ask anything else. I thought though, about the old woman by the bins, about her licking her lips with her fingers in the garbage bags, her neat hair, her damp breath, her smell that hovered between shortbread, wet wool and rotten teeth. I thought about her counting out those coins on the table beside her empty coffee cup. Later I would say to the police that yes, I had seen a woman, once, by the bins acting strangely.

During the interview, one of the police officers, a man with short blond hair and beautiful hands, when I said this, about seeing the woman by the bins once at night, though I didn’t say much of what I’d seen her doing, this I didn’t think was really possible to say, reached into his bag and pulled out a picture of Nell and showed it to me.

Was it her? he asked me, jabbing the picture and I said no, it had been someone else. Have you seen her? he asked. Recently? Since the fire? She has two children, he said.

I said no, that I hadn’t seen her at all, that I hadn’t been near the apartment, that I’d only been out of the hospital for a few days, that we had been staying in a hotel by the lake. That we were leaving soon, in fact. Was that all right? I asked. Was I allowed to leave?

I was speaking too quickly, getting nervous. I was remembering the candles, the cups in the cupboards that were always filled with ash, and I was also quickly pushing all of those things away, pushing them far from me. I could feel sweat collecting on my upper lip and I wiped it with my un-bandaged hand. Of course it was all right, for me to leave. I was only there at the station for questioning, only there to help. I was the victim in all this, no one more than me, a young mother with babies to tend to. Soon, I was released back to my family, to my children, to M.

When I walked out of the station, M was waiting for me behind the steering wheel of our new car, the children were buckled up in their new Swiss-made car seats. I slid onto the soft leather seat on the passenger side and closed the door. M leaned across the sleek console, the GPS system, the touch-sensitive interfaces, and kissed me, and I buckled my seatbelt and M signalled and we turned out onto the road. I think you’ll really like it, he said. What? I said. Our new place, he said.

Our new place, I said after him, repeating. Our new place, I said again, to myself, testing the words. It would be perfect. It would be a house with high ceilings and a view out over the lake and in the summer the days would balloon up inside with happy hot afternoons and in winter the snow would cover the tops of the mountains and we would marvel at the quiet of it, the way it covered everything up, the way that we were there, tucked away inside behind the windows, to see it. We could stand behind those windows looking out for years I thought, loving each other just like we did right now. Love could do that I thought, my love could, it could keep everyone young and happy and always together. I reached into the back seat and scrunched up E’s toes, ran my fingers through B’s hair. I am the only one for you, I thought. For all of you. The only one. What I’m trying to tell you is that that’s what I was thinking when I went there, when M drove us to our new home. I was thinking of love.