“A headless body washed up along the Palisades. No rings on the dead man’s fingers. They cut off his head. It didn’t even rate a byline.”

“Dear god.”

“When they called you about . . . about the head, how did you respond?”

“I went uptown to take a look at it. Explained that it wasn’t me, it wasn’t my twin brother or a long-lost uncle or anybody else in my family. Tried to tell him that it didn’t even look like me—that the teeth were worse, and the man had a boozehound’s nose—and finally, he let it go.”

“What did they do with it?”

“The head was buried in a potter’s field in New Jersey. It’s an ugly thing, to come face-to-face with, well, your own dead face. I still have nightmares. Mary doesn’t know. And . . . oh god. What about your Mary?”

“She died when I was a child. Summer pneumonia. I should have told you from the start.”

“Oh lord, Gilda, don’t apologize. I don’t blame you for lying. With all the mad things you’ve seen—finding my own head bobbing in the Harlem River was the most horrifying thing that ever happened to me. From what you’ve told me, in your town that’s just an ordinary day. I’m the sorry one, girl. I know what it’s like to lose someone.”

There was another long silence, and the distance between us was almost painful. I was trying to decide what to say, when he gave me a hug, and I melted into an eight-year-old girl. He held me for at least a minute, and it still wasn’t long enough.

“I think I know how to find Van Alen,” I said.

“Fine, fine. First, I’m going to run inside and grab a few rolls or something for you to eat. You sit down on this bench—right here. It’s a good one. I’ll be right back, and you, you just enjoy the park.”

He had been gone a minute or two when the door to his house—not mine, never mine—opened again, and down the steps, shading her eyes against the rising sun, came Mary Fall. From where Virgil had put me, I could see her, but she couldn’t see me. I’m certain she had grown old, that her hair was gray, her hands twisted with arthritis. I’m sure her dress was faded, and maybe she didn’t smile as she walked into the park and sat down on her favorite bench. But she dragged her left hand through the flowers as she walked, and she had a light in her eyes that I recognized—the giddy look of a little girl who is taking her favorite book to the park to read for the thousandth time.