He did not respond immediately, and I waited, without much interest, for him to go on.

“Were you?” he said nonsensically, turning abruptly to me. “Kirstie Johanssen,” he said suddenly. “Isn’t she the one … who knew your father?”

Ann was looking at me, too, now, and when I did not respond she said, “Yes, I think so,” and then to Gerry, incredulous, “That was who was calling? Kirstie Johanssen?”

“No,” he said. “No, no.”

He was looking at the countertop with uncharacteristic intensity. “That was someone else. Kirstie Johanssen is missing.”

Ann closed the refrigerator door. “Missing?” she repeated. “What does that mean, missing?”

Gerry did not answer, or if he did I didn’t hear him—I was regarding Ann contemplatively, as if really seeing her for the first time in a long while. She has aged badly, I thought. But how exactly, it was more difficult to say. Like an old shoe that you have had for many years, after a certain point it becomes difficult to tell how it might look to other people.

They were both looking at me now. Ann, who had just poured a glass of water, put it down slowly in front of me, like she had forgotten what it was.

“What was that?” she said.

I was silent, at first, and then I said, “I didn’t say anything.”

“But of course you did,” said Ann. Her brow furrowed, and then she laughed as if despite herself. “You said I looked like an old shoe.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but no words came out—I could not explain it.

They were even closer now, Gerry especially, until both their faces, curiously blank, were mere feet from mine, and I felt myself inspected. Not only that, I felt suspicion in their gaze. Was it possible? I thought. Could they know already?

“Nothing!” I burst out, and swept my arm up to emphasize my point—but in doing so I knocked the glass Ann had just set down off the counter, and next I heard it crash into a million pieces on the floor.

“Silly me,” I said, quietly and to myself, looking down from my perch to the shards twinkling up at me.

Glass, I thought. Life, two fingers, and then the room went sideways, and because of the proximity of the shards to my open eye, I deduced that I was now lying on the floor.

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