To the news that her husband had been smuggling liquor, Edith only shook her head and shrugged. I informed her of her husband’s dalliance with Madame Fournier, even quoting some particularly foul selections from their love notes, but her reaction was minimal. Though I held back the incident with the shadows, I detailed Fournier’s unfortunate end, laying on the gore thick enough to scandalize the women at the adjoining tables, and Edith only chuckled.

“I suppose their affair can continue in death,” she said.

“You knew none of this?”

“Of course not. The man I loved never existed at all. The creature that shared my bed for all those years—he was a demon. A born liar. Why should anything you have to say surprise me?”

“Have you any idea where he might have gotten that bootleg liquor?”

She might have looked amused if her eyes hadn’t been so hard. “Do you know what we talked about? What dominated our conversations for the last, oh, six or seven years? The newspaper. He read his sections, and I read mine. He related some amusing anecdote from the business pages, and I laughed politely. I showed him a spread of the latest fall dresses, and he pretended to care.”

“He never spoke of the Westside?”

“He never spoke of anything at all.” Another morsel of toast. “There’s no point in you continuing this.”

“I disagree.”

“He’s dead. What does it matter who killed him?”

“It seemed quite important to you yesterday.”

“Yesterday was a long time back.”

“So put it aside. What can you tell me about this symbol?” I turned my hands over and showed her my gloves. Every woman in the café wore them—wrist-length or elbow-length, rose or sage, silk or kid leather—and I had not wanted to look out of place. I wore my mother’s, brown and ugly, with the hideous bloody fist.

“It was on my gloves.”

“Where else?”

“It was . . . this is a bit embarrassing, actually, but Galen had it, as a tattoo.”

“Where?”

“His shoulder blade.”

“How long had he had it?”

“Since Juliette was a child. He sailed for Jakarta and came home with that awful brand.”

“And what did he tell you it meant?”

“It was a symbol of the South Seas. Some horrible pagan nonsense. I don’t believe it meant anything at all.”

“Then how did it get on my mother’s gloves?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t believe I care.”

She drained her coffee and reached for the gleaming silver pot. The last sludgy grounds slid into her china cup. She drank them, and her lips curled into a bitter frown.

“You should eat something,” I said.

“So should you.”

My breakfast had congealed into a foul, inedible pile. I set my toast atop the mess.

“What would you say,” I asked her, “if I told you our city were this toast?”