“I never forget a face.”

“We can play a guessing game if it’ll help,” he said.

I’d no energy to solve that little puzzle. “Not much for games tonight.”

“Are you waiting for someone?”

“Sister,” I said. “She’s in surgery.”

“I’m here for a friend. He was just brought in for a stroke.” He’d coaxed me into a chair, and the two of us had sat in silence. He was a stranger, and yet I felt closer to him than anyone at that moment.

When the doctors told me I could see Marisa, I thanked David and disappeared behind swinging doors. All my annoyance melted when I saw Marisa in her hospital bed. Her face was pale, her hair shorn, and there were endless tubes coming out of her body.

“She can fool you,” I said, more to myself, as David now hugged me closer.

“How?”

“She mentioned Detective Richards at last night’s dinner. She wasn’t going to see him this year, but she did.”

“It doesn’t hurt for her to talk to him. You said she’s been doing it for the last several years. It’s her way of feeling less powerless because she knows the case will never be solved.”

The windowpane caught his reflection. Our gazes met. “How do you know it won’t be solved?”

“It’s been thirteen years. You said yourself the river washed away the forensic data. There were no witnesses.”

“I’ve stopped trying to tell her that. She won’t listen. Jack called me tonight. She was asking him about Clare.”

“What did she ask him?”

“About the night Clare died. No new information, of course. Same old. It’s not good for her to stir up the past.”

“How so?”

“She’s always been obsessed with Clare’s death. For most of last year, she was focused on her sobriety. It was all going great. And then last December she started visiting the river. Taking pictures.”

“You said she had an art exhibit.”

“She did. I tried to talk her out of it. I thought it would be awkward. Embarrassing even. But I was so struck by the power of her images. She’s surprisingly very talented.”

“Let Marisa ask her questions. Let this run its course,” he said. “She’ll poke around and realize some puzzles just can’t be solved.”

I turned and faced him, tracing small circles in the center of his chest covered in a sprinkling of dark hair. “What if she doesn’t realize this is unsolvable? What if she spirals out of control?”

“I learned a long time ago not to borrow trouble. Life dishes up plenty without you heaping on extras.”