“They’re here,” Rachel said. Golda ran to the window and stood next to Rachel as the van and car pulled into the Rosses’ driveway. A tall black man got out of the car and looked up at the house, then a woman got out. They stood still, then he took her hand, and all at once Rachel started to cry. “Rache, Rache,” Golda said, “I’m sorry. But everything I said was true. He’s a lovely guy, Rache. I envy you.” Golda looked out at the couple and suddenly she remembered the black cop . . . Adam’s friend . . . in the dark room, reaching for Rachel. Who knows what they’d said to each other in that room before Golda opened the door. Who knows what Rachel felt then and what she remembers. He was black, true, and a shitheel cop who probably only made twenty or thirty thousand a year. But he was the sweetest-­looking man Golda had ever seen and there were, after all, some things that couldn’t be measured in money.

Dr. Garner answered the door. Golda smiled, all teeth.

“We’re not the welcome wagon,” Golda said, “but we got a whole bottle of brandy and I bet a drink sounds pretty good about now.”

He smiled and opened the door all the way. He was wearing wash slacks and a frayed dress shirt with the collar cut off, but he was the kind of man who looked neat no matter what.

He led them down the hall to the kitchen calling “Willa . . . Willa, company . . .”

The kitchen was already unpacked, empty boxes waited next to the back door, and Rachel thought the place looked and smelled cleaner than it ever had when Temma Ross lived there. She put the coffeepot on the stove as Willa Garner came into the kitchen. She had on a loose housedress-­smock, bright cotton, still crisp after all the unpacking. She was much taller than Rachel, about Golda’s height, and a little overweight, with a handsome round face and big firm arms, and she moved slowly and confidently, making Rachel feel jerky and nervous.

They had coffee, cake, and brandy and they talked easily. The Garners came from the city. They had two sons, one seventeen, one fourteen, both living with Tom Garner’s mother on East Ninetieth Street until the school term ended. He’d bought a good practice in Lake Grove, and there was a good hospital nearby. He was an orthopedist. “ ‘Orthopods,’ we call ourselves,” he said, smiling. He walked around the back of Rachel’s chair and she smelled his sweat, sweet and sharp, and she thought of Hawkins again. The doorbell rang and for one crazy second she imagined that when Willa Garner opened the back door, she’d see him at last. But it was Reverend Ryder (she didn’t know his first name), pastor of the First Congregational Church. He was carrying a big, flat cake box and smiling.