He stopped speaking, let his sentence collapse.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s impossible to get a handle on it.”

“I miss her,” he said. “But that’s not the worst. How she died—it’s horrible.”

“Let’s get another round,” I said. I signaled to the waitress.

“Can I ask you a question?” he said. “Are the cops talking to you?”

“That detective did,” I said. “Ash.”

“They keep coming to my house and the office, and calling me. They think I fucking killed her. They keep asking me, where was I, had we fought, they keep talking about old shit.”

“Like what?”

“This bar fight I got into a long time ago. I was twenty-two. It was dumb. Some fratty assholes were picking on this kid, this friend of mine. I threw a punch and the police showed up. One of the dudes had a knife and they arrested everyone.”

I thought of the other punch, that I had witnessed. He caught my look.

“I have a temper,” he said. “I admit it. But I’ve never hit a woman. I could never hurt Danielle.”

I sipped my drink, keeping my eyes on him.

“Do you believe me?” he said.

“Yeah.”

He smiled at me and I smiled back. His sorrow gave me an odd sense of comfort, and it felt good to be there, drinking.

“You and Audrey been hanging out?” he said.

“Only once, the other night. I met her before, with Danielle.”

“They were best friends. The three of us hung around together a lot. They were great to work with, too. Their videos are popular.”

“I like Audrey,” I said.

“Yeah, Audrey’s okay. I like her, too. I don’t think she’ll stick around, though. I mean the guys were douchey to her, you saw it. Except when Danielle was there. Now . . . it will be different now.”

“Everything is different now,” I said.

“I keep remembering random things. One night I stayed late to finish a project at work, and I didn’t get home until nine o’clock. She’d ordered a pizza for me. She kept it hot in the oven. Shit like that, that’s nice. Most people, you get to know them, no matter how normal or cool they come off at first, underneath they’re needy, or crazy, or delusional. D, she was always smiling, doing her nails, whatever. You could trust her.”

“That’s great to hear. She really was doing okay, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah. She didn’t talk to me much about her past. I had the sense things were bad.”

“It was bad. I mean, she was still Danielle, she could make everything seem fun, and like you were the most amazing person. But with the drugs, she was angry a lot, and she didn’t really care about anybody. She was just kind of checked out all the time, didn’t pay attention to anything. It sucked. I’m so glad she got clean.”

“I just can’t imagine her like that,” Brandon said.

“You’re lucky you got to spend time with her when you did,” I said. “Maybe you saw her at her best. I never had the chance to get to know her again.”