—We know how upsetting this is for you, Helen. She wished they would not say that. They could not possibly know. The idea she would never see Arthur again was bottomless and strange, a book of empty pages, a shunt off the side of a train, the stair you thought was there in the dark but wasn’t. The second of January. Tuesday morning. Eleven forty-five. Four days they had been gone. When Helen saw the Maiden Rock through her living-room window, she had the uncanny sensation of watching a car drive by with no one at the wheel.
