If she does know, Allison doesn’t raise the topic. Instead, after we’re seated, she begins the session as she always does: “How are you today?”

“Cursed,” I say.

She doesn’t recoil, which reveals that she listens to me more carefully than I’ve given her credit for. Still, she feels the need for me to provide the exposition because she says, “Tell me what you mean by that, Ella.”

“I’m assuming you know about Lauren Wright being murdered.”

“Yes. I read about it. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. So . . . what I’m saying is don’t get too close to me. You might end up on the murdered list too.”

Allison sniffles, the way you do when someone tells a joke that isn’t at all funny. “Is that how you feel?”

“No. I think that’s the undeniable reality. Whoever I love gets murdered. End of story.”

I know I’m laying it on thick, but I feel as if it’s my prerogative in a setting where I’m paying by the hour.

“I see,” she says, one of her prompts for me to elaborate.

“I know that the tragedy here belongs to Lauren and her family. It’s not about me. But . . . my sister was murdered six months ago, and now the woman I was closest to aside from Charlotte has been too. It’s not fair.”

“You’re right. It’s not fair,” Allison says in her soothing voice. “And I know it may feel as if it’s directed at you, but tragedies sometimes don’t space themselves out. I have many patients who’ve lost two loved ones in close succession.”

“Were your patients’ loved ones murdered?”

She smiles tautly at my challenge. “No. That’s . . . statistically speaking, very unlikely. I agree. But it still doesn’t mean you’re some meaningful common denominator in both deaths. That part is a coincidence.”

“Lucky me, I guess.”

When I leave Allison’s, I get on the number one train heading uptown. Even though it’s the local, I take it all the way to 155th Street, as I’m in no hurry to get to where I’m going.

I haven’t been to Charlotte’s gravesite since she was laid to rest. Given that I was just at a cemetery the other day, I’m not sure why I thought it would be beneficial to be here today. I just wanted to talk to my sister, I guess.

Everything about the grounds looks different than it did on that rainy day six months ago. Back then, I remember feeling an almost magnetic pull toward Charlotte’s open grave, but today I’m having difficulty even remembering the location of the burial plot.

I find it in the back of the cemetery. The placement seems so unfamiliar that I momentarily wonder if they’ve moved it. Ridiculous, of course.