“Yes, yes, of course. Thank you.”

She turns to go, but words erupt from me, unexpected words.

“Did you grow up here?” I ask.

She turns back toward me, suspicious. “My whole life.”

“Did we know each other?” I ask, although I knew so few people in high school. And after I met Mary, I didn’t care about meeting anyone else.

She sighs. I’m not going to give up, at least not easily, and I can tell by the look on her face that she’s weighing her desire to keep her name to herself with the hassle that might ensue if she doesn’t tell me. She gives in.

“Jenny Hudson.”

I know that name. Don’t I? “Did we know each other? I’m Paul Elias.”

She can’t possibly be more disinterested. “I don’t know.”

Again she turns to go, when a name emerges from my deepest subconscious.

“Gillian Hudson,” I say. The girl who drowned at the beginning, when everything else started. Even though Jenny has taken a few steps away from me, she stops in her tracks. “Any relation?”

She turns around with a skeptical look on her face. And one a bit frightened as well. “You knew Gillian?”

“Not really. Only the name.”

Tiredness descends on her face, and she puts one hand on her hip. “Then why are you asking about her?” But it isn’t an accusation as much as a plea. She unties her apron and pulls it off in one smooth motion before poking her head in through the door that leads to the kitchen, shouting, “I’m taking a break.”

A panicked voice shouts back, “Right now?” But she doesn’t reply. She crouches down and slides into the booth beside me, leaning forward on both elbows. Everything about this situation startles me.

“I remember when she drowned,” I say, picking up a French fry and putting it back down again. Her eyes are sad. It’s a wonder to me how I can misread someone so much.

“That was a long time ago. Why bring it up now? Why come back?”

“I wanted to show my granddaughter where I grew up.”

Jenny is the first person who isn’t taken in. “Sure,” she spits out. “Okay. Why else are you here?”

I weigh telling her everything. “My wife died here, in Nysa, many years ago. She had . . . mental challenges. She saw a woman who wasn’t actually there, a woman with silver-white hair.” I shrug. “Maybe you knew her? Mary? Her mom worked here.”

Jenny nods. “I remember her.”

“Now my granddaughter is seeing the same thing, the same person. I don’t know if that’s why I’m here. But it all feels connected.”

Jenny’s face is frozen. I can’t tell if she is going to slap me, stand up and walk off, or go on staring for the next thousand years.

She doesn’t do any of those. She leans back in the booth, rubs her temples, and shakes her head. “My friends and I saw her.”