Chapter 8: The Widow's House

I did not ask Eli what the text meant.

I put my hand flat on the screen of his phone, pushed it back down against his hip, and said, "I'm going to see her."

"Hannah, don't go alone."

"Then drive me."

"Now?"

"Now."

Joan Danner lived in a narrow brick row house in Queens, with a plastic Virgin Mary in the front garden and a porch light that stayed on all night.

It was past eleven when we pulled up.

The light was on.

The door opened before I had finished knocking.

Joan stood there in a quilted robe, with her hair flat on one side and her face scrubbed clean.

Without the pearl buttons and the good cardigan she looked like what she was, a tired woman of sixty-three.

"I thought you'd come," she said. "Bryce isn't here. He's at the hotel with that girl. Come in, come in. Hello, Eli."

"Joan."

"Don't 'Joan' me. Sit down, both of you."

The kitchen was small and yellow and smelled of onions.

A pot of her chicken soup sat on the stove.

She ladled out two bowls without asking and set them on the oilcloth.

I couldn't eat, and I took a spoonful anyway, because it was hers.

It was very good.

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