“What’s that?”

“You know. Where Greg was killed.”

“I don’t.”

And now I remembered where I’d seen those signatures.

“I used to play a game when I was little,” I said. “My friend and me, writing each other’s names, copying each other’s signature. You could do a lot with Marjorie Sutton’s signature. I guess she’s not someone who checks her accounts very thoroughly. It was you, wasn’t it?”

Joe looked at me stonily. I could feel his hand, hardly more than his fingertips, brushing the back of my neck.

“The thing about Milena,” I said, “is she had a nose for weakness, for something she could use. She saw it, picked it up, and when you dropped her for Frances, she used it. No wonder you wanted to clear out my house for me. You needed to find it. You must have been frantic. And when Frances guessed—as she must have done, or why would you have killed her?—was it easier the third time?”

Joe stared at me, but didn’t speak.

“I just wanted to know,” I said.

“So now you do,” he said quietly.

“So this is what it’s going to be?” I said. “Poor Ellie. Couldn’t take it. Couldn’t live without her husband. There’s just one thing.”

“What’s that?” said Joe.

“I don’t care,” I said, and I pushed the accelerator to the floor so that the rubber on the tires screamed and the car leaped forward. No stalling this time. I heard a shout but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I was in a dream anyway, in the car with this man whom Greg had trusted and loved until he hadn’t trusted him anymore. Forty miles an hour. Then fifty. Then sixty. We were running out of road.

I heard a scream and I didn’t know whether it was Joe’s scream of terror or something inside my head or the tires against the rough road, and I had a moment to remember that this was Gwen’s car I was destroying, and then it wasn’t fast and loud and violent, but slow, silent, peaceful. And it was no longer winter, a day pinched by darkness and ice; it was warm. A summer afternoon, fresh, soft and clean, the kind that’s like a blessing, full of blossom and birdsong. There he was at last—oh, I had waited so long—walking toward me over the grass and such a smile on his face, his dear, familiar face. The smile he gave only to me. How I’ve missed you, I said, I wanted to say. How badly I’ve missed you. And I wanted to say, Have I done well? Do I make you proud? And I love you, how I love you. I will never stop loving you.