“Awwww,” said Angel. “First time I’ve worn it, too.”

Rachel moved from daggers to swords.

“You open your mouth again, and you’ll be buried in that suit,” she said.

Angel went quiet. All things considered, it was the smartest move.

The woman was seated by a window on the right side of the bus. In one day, she was passing through more states than she had previously visited in her entire life. The bus pulled into South Station in Boston. Now, with thirty minutes to spare, she wandered down to the Amtrak concourse and bought herself a cup of coffee and a Danish. Both were expensive, and she looked with dismay at the little wad of bills in her purse, adorned by a smattering of change, but she was hungry, even after the muffin the man from the garage had so kindly bought for her. She took a seat and watched the people go by, the businessmen in their suits, the harried mothers with their children. She watched the arrivals and departures change, the names clicking rapidly across the big board above her head. The trains on the platform were silver and sleek. A young black woman took a seat beside her and opened a newspaper. Her suit was neatly tailored, and her hair was cut very short. A brown leather attaché case stood at her feet, and she wore a small matching purse upon her shoulder. A diamond engagement ring gleamed upon her left hand.

I have a daughter your age, thought the old woman, but she will never be like you. She will never wear a tailored suit, or read what you read, and no man will ever give her a ring like the one that you wear. She is a lost soul, a troubled soul, but I love her, and she is mine. The man who had her upon me is gone now. He is dead, and he is no loss to the world. They would call what he did to me rape, I suppose, for I surrendered to him out of fear. We were all afraid of him, and of what he could do. We believed that he had killed my older sister, for she went away with him and did not return home alive, and when he came back to us he took me in her place.

But he died for what he did, and he died badly. They asked us if we wanted them to rebuild his face, if we wanted to have the casket open for a viewing. We told them to leave him as he was found, and to bury him in a pine box with ropes for handles. They marked his grave with a wooden cross, but on the night he was buried I went to the place where he lay and I took the cross away, and I burned it in the hope that he would be forgotten. But I gave birth to his child, and I loved her even though there was something of him in her. Perhaps she never had a chance, cursed with a father like that. He tainted her, polluting her from the moment she was born, the seed of her own destruction contained within his own. She was always a sad child, an angry child, yet how could she leave us for that other life? How could she find peace in such a city, among men who would use her for money, who would feed her drugs and alcohol to keep her pliant? How could we have let that happen to her?

And the boy-no, the man, for that is what he is now-tried to look out for her, but he gave up on her, and now she is gone. My daughter is gone, and nobody yet cares enough about her to seek her out, nobody except me. But I will make them care. She is mine, and I will bring her back. He will help me, for she is blood to him, and he owes her a blood debt.

He killed her father. Now he will bring her back to this life, and to me.

The guests were scattered through the living room and the kitchen. Some had found their way outside and were sitting beneath the bare trees in our yard, wearing their coats and enjoying the open air as they drank beer and wine and ate hot food from paper plates. Angel and Louis, as always, were slightly apart from the rest, occupying a stone bench that looked out over the marshes. Our Lab retriever, Walter, lay at their feet, Angel’s fingers gently stroking his head. I went over to join them, checking as I went that nobody lacked for food and drink.

“You want to hear a joke?” said Angel. “There’s this duck on a pond, and he’s getting really pissed at this other duck who’s coming on to his girl, so he decides to hire an assassin duck to bump him off.”

Louis breathed out loudly through his nose with a sound like gas leaking under near-unendurable pressure. Angel ignored him.

“So the assassin arrives, and the duck meets him in some reeds. The assassin tells him that it will cost five pieces of bread to kill the target, payable after the deed is done. The duck tells him that’s fine, and the assassin says, ‘So, do you want me to send you the body?’ And the duck says, ‘No, just send me the bill.’”

There was silence.

“Bill,” said Angel again. “You know, it’s-”

“I got a joke,” said Louis.

We both looked at him in surprise.

“You hear the one about the dead irritating guy in the cheap suit?”

We waited.

“That’s it,” said Louis.

“That’s not funny,” said Angel.

“Makes me laugh,” said Louis.

A man touched me on the arm, and I found Walter Cole standing beside me. He was retired now, but he had taught me much of what I knew when I was a cop. Our bad days were behind us, and he had come to an accommodation with what I was and with what I was capable of doing. I left Angel and Louis to bicker, and walked back to the house with Walter.

“About that dog,” he said.

“He’s a good dog,” I said. “Not smart, but loyal.”

“I’m not looking to give him a job. You called him Walter.”

“I like the name.”

“You named your dog after me?”

“I thought you’d be flattered. Anyway, nobody needs to know. It’s not as if he looks like you. He has more hair, for a start.”

“Oh, that’s very funny. Even the dog is funnier than you.”

We entered the kitchen, and Walter retrieved a bottle of Sebago ale from the fridge. I didn’t offer him a glass. I knew that he preferred to drink it by the neck when he could, which meant anytime he was out of his wife’s sight. Outside, I saw Rachel talking with Pam. Her sister was smaller than Rachel, and spikier, which was saying something. Whenever I hugged her, I expected to be pierced by spines. Sam was asleep in an upstairs room. Rachel’s mother was keeping an eye on her.

Walter saw me follow Rachel’s progress through the garden.

“How are you two doing?” asked Walter.

“Three of us,” I reminded him. “We’re doing okay, I guess.”

“It’s hard, when there’s a new baby in a house.”

“I know. I remember.”

Walter’s hand rose slightly. He seemed on the verge of touching my shoulder, until his hand slowly fell away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, instead. “It’s not that I forget them. I don’t know what it is exactly. Sometimes it seems like another life, another time. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” I said. “I know just what you mean.”

There was a breeze blowing, and it caused the rope swing on the oak tree to move in a slow arc, as though an unseen child were playing upon it. I could see the channels shining in the marshes beyond, intersecting in places as they carved their paths through the reeds, the waters of one intermingling with those of another, each changed irrevocably by the meeting. Lives were like that: when their paths crossed, they emerged altered forever by the encounter, sometimes in small, almost invisible ways, and other times so profoundly that nothing that followed could ever be the same again. The residue of other lives infects us, and we in turn pass it on to those whom we later meet.

“I think she worries,” I said.

“About what?”

“About us. About me. She’s risked so much, and she’s been hurt for it. She doesn’t want to be scared anymore, but she is. She’s afraid for us, and she’s afraid for Sam.”

“You’ve talked about it?”

“No, not really.”

“Maybe it’s time, before things get worse.”