Davis was many things, but impulsive wasn’t one of them. He’d want to make sure to check every box – a guy like him would be destroyed in prison. Perhaps he’d laid low for another day and then gone to the studio, let himself in – the place was never locked, for fuck’s sake – and waited there, ready to kill him, no clue that it was the very night that Vera and I had claimed John had fallen …

‘My husband died, you know,’ Maggie said abruptly as we turned the corner.

My shoulders jolted – and I momentarily pushed theories about Davis aside. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t even know you were married, actually.’

‘It was a long time ago, so I don’t talk about it much,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t seem to be much of a point to dwell on the past like that. It was when I was in my forties. My daughter was in high school. It was awful for us both. I don’t know what’s harder: to lose a parent or to lose a partner. Both, probably. In their own ways.’

I blinked a couple of times.

‘You don’t have your parents in your life, do you?’

I halted, turning, and my chest seemed to constrict. Suddenly, I imagined Maggie, poking around my place, looking for my secrets. Somehow finding a way to listen in on my conversations, asking around town for gossip about me.

‘How did you know that?’

‘You can see loneliness in others,’ Maggie said, lips pressing tightly together. Then she smiled, going on. ‘I mean, you can see in others what you’ve experienced yourself. You’ve never mentioned your parents,’ she said. ‘I got the sense that you’d lost them, that you and I were united in grief.’

It was funny, grief, the way it could hook you, keep you in its grasp, no matter how complicated it was. I wondered if Maggie knew it like that, if amid the nostalgia, the desire she felt for her husband, there was more there, too. Memories of the bad along with the good. Memories you weren’t supposed to talk about – were supposed to put behind you.

I sighed, knowing it didn’t matter, not really – grief was the same either way. I felt guilty, suddenly, for pitying her the way I had. Between her ugly maroon sweaters and her eagerness to accompany me on walks, I’d pegged her as some sort of sad spinster. But who was I to judge? I was just as lost as she was, probably a whole lot more. Surrounded by Vera and John, I’d thought I could cover my loneliness up, a nice slipcover over a ratty Craigslist couch. But Maggie could see it still. Perhaps everyone could, I thought, as moisture coated my eyes.