In bed he’s like a teenaged boy, awkward and desperate, pawing at her hooks and clasps until everything pops open just by sheer force of will, finished before Finn has even started. And it’s as if everything she needs to know about him is right there, as if the way he bites down on her clavicle says it all. His wife, once a long-legged sixteen-year-old, now slack-waisted and baby-weary, was his first, possibly his only; he has never cheated before because he’s never been presented with the opportunity. Finn made things effortless for him, and now a part of this unremarkable man will always be hers. Unremarkable Man, like some kind of lame superhero, with the power to make you forget him the instant he walks out the door.

Unremarkable Man falls asleep immediately, and Finn gets up, puts on a pair of shorts, and sits on the front stoop with a cigarette and a glass of Malbec. She checks her phone: 5 a.m. Her flight home is in four hours. Funny, how she still considers Thunder Bay “home” after all these years away. It’s just a word, she tells herself, it doesn’t mean anything. But she knows that’s not true. She loves words too much to believe it.

On her street, people are getting up to walk the dog, take the kids to swimming practice, head to cardio boot camp. The sky is still black, pierced with only a few of the brightest, pluckiest stars. And even though this is one of the things Finn usually loves about living in the suburbs, tonight it’s like those few stars are laughing, winking their luminous and condescending plasma-filled eyes at her.

She clutches her legs tightly to her chest, tipping back the wine from the glass wedged between her knees. She doesn’t light the cigarette. Fuck you, stars, she thinks. Fuck you for thinking you’re the only ones who can harness the power of gravity to hold yourself together. Fuck you for thinking you’re so much better than me. Why don’t you get off your hundreds-of-light-years-away asses and come down here and say it to my face. Why don’t you come down here and watch me nucleosynthesize when I go supernova. Why don’t you come down here and watch me fucking explode.

—

The first call had come at ten that morning, while Finn was sitting outside with her coffee on the back steps of her townhouse, watching Max the golden retriever run around in the yard.

“Ms. Parker?” a husky female voice asked. “I’m glad I caught you at home.”

Finn sighed. One of the perils of working from home is that you’re always at home. “Who is this?” she asked.

“My name is Cassandra Coelho. I’m a reporter with Thunder Bay News. I was wondering if I could ask you some questions about your mother.”