“For about a year. I moved out to be with Greg. We lived at his old place before we found this apartment. But Elise stayed in touch. We were very different, and she had her problems. She was my wild friend. I guess I got to be a little wild by knowing her.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Bipolar disorder. Huge highs, where she was off-the-wall manic. Then terrible depressions, where she’d cut herself. I picked her up at the ER once after she accidentally hit an artery in her ankle and almost bled out. That was, like, a year ago. I think lately she was trying to get a handle on that whole thing.”

“How?”

“Medication, mostly, and therapy. She was seeing a psychiatrist named Bittner. She talked about that.”

Coyle made a note.

“With Elise, it all went back to her dad. He was French. A classical musician, but I got the feeling he never really made it. She said he gave her the name Elise, after the Beethoven music. You know, the song ‘Für Elise,’ that kids play when they’re learning piano? She said when she was little, the name made her special, but later she hated having to explain it. Anyway, when she was three, her father left the family. Like, packed up and went back to France or something.”

“Was she in touch with him?”

“Not much. I think he wrote letters. She adored him, even though it seemed one-sided. She was like some of my other friends with divorced parents. After her father was gone, Elise got to make up who he was. He sent her books of poetry. When she talked to me about him, the poems got all mixed up with her father. She thought he wrote them, and she was always trying to understand what the poems meant so she could understand her father and why he left. She never got over his leaving. She was still a little three-year-old girl whose father left her behind. She was just alone and…lost.”

Tears suddenly rolled down Alvarez’s cheeks, and she wiped at them with the palms of her hands. She looked away from Coyle. Then something shuddered through her, and she bent over and wept with deep, heaving breaths.

Coyle leaned toward her but stopped. He had been taught a single, unalterable consolation: I’m sorry for your loss. The sentiment always sounded to Coyle like something tested by attorneys to be safe from misunderstanding or repercussion. No longer capable of imbuing it with sincerity, he had grown to hate the expression. But he also knew the dangers of touching a young woman alone in her apartment. He said, “I’m sorry…this happened.”

The words came out in a whisper. He wasn’t sure she heard him. He was no good at reassurance. He was the computer guy, too small and thin to represent any kind of protection.