“Pat was devastated. We all were. Nan was such a vivacious, vibrant woman. We thought she’d live forever. The cancer was fourth stage by the time they discovered it. She was gone in just three months. A terrible thing, a terrible time.”

In spite of the woman’s composure, David could see that the loss of Nanette and no doubt the subsequent death of Patrick Corley still affected her after all these years. And Haskell Rosewater had died only fourteen months earlier. Estella was at that point when friends and loved ones began to pass away ever more frequently. The essential loneliness that was a key thread in the weave of life, which everyone strove not to think about, now became a truth that she could no longer avoid considering.

“I’m sorry to dredge up bad memories,” David said.

“Don’t concern yourself, young man. I’m no fragile flower. Anyway, to get to what brought you here, it’s necessary to do a little dredging first.”

He set the framed photo on the table between them. “After his wife died, I understand Patrick more or less . . . withdrew.”

“He was nearly finished with the last house we did together. He wrapped it, we sold it, and he retreated to his place like a man going to a bunker to ride out Armageddon.”

David recited the address from Lew Ross’s report. “Nine Rock Point Lane.”

“Yes. The last house on the street. The only house. He bought the land a long time ago, a rare buildable tract on the coast, where he eventually meant to construct eight other houses after he built his own, but there’s only the one. After Nanette passed, he closed his business, retired. Everyone who cared about him invited him to dinner, to cards, to one thing or another, but he rarely accepted. Within a year he stopped socializing altogether. We all knew how close he and Nanette were, but we thought in time he’d get over the loss of her. He never did.”

“Sometimes it’s hard,” David said. “Sometimes there’s really no getting over it.”

Her mouth tightened. She nodded and looked down at her hands, and he knew she was thinking about her husband.

After giving Estella a moment to collect herself, which she might not have required, David said, “Five years following Nanette’s . . . passing, Patrick died of a heart attack in a supermarket.”

She looked up and unfolded her hands from her lap and put her arms on the arms of the chair. “Yes.”

“There’s no doubt he died.”

“I know the manager of the market, Brenda Ainsley. She gave him CPR. She said the paramedics were there in three minutes. They also gave him CPR. No one could revive him. It was that heart attack they call the widow-maker, but he was already a widower.”

“There was no funeral.”