Mrs. Wilson told me that the young man at the table was Helen’s beau, Ed Fisher, and that he and Helen had been dating for three months, although the night Ray happened upon her at the diner would be their last date, their connection dissipating all at once like water into sand. But now he was there at Ray’s side, wiry and muscular, not slack but not a soldier either, or at least not a veteran of combat, and a head taller than Ray. When he spoke again his voice was firm and resolute and direct: “I’m gonna ask you to step away from our table, bud.”

The waitress had disappeared now, perhaps to call the police, the diner around them utterly frozen as if in tableau.

“I’ve been to the house,” Ray said.

“I know.”

“They told you?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been trying to see you. To talk to you.”

“Ray, this is my boyfriend. Ed Fisher. Ed—this is Ray. My . . . well, he used to be my neighbor.”

“Your neighbor?” Ray said.

“Now you should go,” she said. “You don’t live here anymore, Ray.”

And then another question, one which had been eating at him for all those weeks and which he might have asked anyone he had come across, even the priest at the Buddhist church, but had not because, in his heart, he already knew the answer: “Where’s Jimmy, Helen?”

“Jimmy?”

“Where is he? Is he still in the army?”

“Ray,” Helen said quietly. Just that.

She did not have to say more. The force of it was unexpected: a hard blow that seemed to strike him everywhere at once as if the air itself had solidified around him and then pressed in so that the whole of him—not just his body but everything he was—seemed all at once to crush in on itself.

“Ah no,” he said. “Goddammit. Goddammit.”

“Come on, bud,” Fisher said at his arm, and while a moment before Ray might well have swung on him, on his bland tan face, might have swung on him and might have kept on swinging in rage and terror and despair, now he let that thin hard grip turn him away from the table, glancing back at Helen one final time, her face a mask of confusion and concern and even sadness. But not love. And Ray hoped he would never see that face again.