“I’m grateful, truly.”

“I’m the same way, Hazzley. I hesitate to ask for help, or don’t ask at all.” He got out of the car but leaned back in before he shut the door. “We’ll go out for a meal together, how about that?”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said.

“Good. Let’s make it tomorrow night, then.” He rapped the car roof as he shut the door and didn’t look back as he entered his house.

Hazzley drove on to the café before going home. She might as well tell Cass what had happened. There wasn’t much to hide anymore.

GWEN AND ALLAM RETURNED to Gwen’s home and sat at her kitchen table having coffee.

“I’m glad we could do that for Hazzley,” she said. “She must have felt the whole weight of the house tilting into that corner of the basement. She must feel a hundred years younger. Did you see the look on her face when we said goodbye?”

“Yes,” said Allam. “I am glad this problem is solved for her. Maybe she felt badly that she said nothing before this, that she took no action a long time ago. It was good that she asked for help.”

“Too bad the clearing out ended up being her responsibility. That was tough for her. I just hope she didn’t feel any guilt.”

“There was no reason for guilt. Not a bit, as Canadians say,” said Allam.

Gwen sat back in her chair. “Do you remember how the conversation turned to guilt a few weeks ago when we were at Cassie’s?”

Allam nodded, remembering well.

“There’s something I haven’t been able to get out of my mind.”

“Tell me,” he said quietly.

“When Brigg was alive—when he was in bed after he’d had the stroke—I had a dream that wouldn’t go away. It’s like a never-ending nightmare.”

Allam reached for her hand while she talked.

She looked as if she’d decided not to go on, but then changed her mind.

“Okay, this is the dream. I was lying in bed and became aware of Brigg, who was somehow outside the house, two storeys up, but hanging on to the outer sill of the open window in the bedroom. Not the main bedroom, the one we’d always shared, but the spare room where I slept after he had the stroke. He was desperate to get back inside, but he couldn’t, no matter how he tried. I wanted to wake up. I was fighting to wake up. I was still in bed in the dream, but I could see how desperate he was, how his fingers were curved, how his nails were ashen. I could see dirt beneath them. He was pleading: ‘Pull me in.’ He was trying to crawl through the window. But in the dream—the nightmare—I turned my back and my only thought was: Why can’t he keep his fingernails clean?”

She stopped and looked away. “What will it take to leave those memories behind? To be free of them once and for all? What kind of monster am I to turn my back, even in a dream? I still think about him clinging to the sill, his desperation to stay alive. I’m still grieving.”