The woman’s name was Marcia Fuller, and her house was on a road that wound around Cayuga Lake. I drove, troubled by the missing furniture, the motorcycle, but told myself Geoff had been right—my mother had sent the movers. Someone had stolen the motorcycle, like he’d said—they’d seen it there, unused, and had wheeled it off in the dead of the night. I had a hazy memory of the lake from the night of the accident—the snow and the darkness, the sense of wind blown off a frozen surface. I’d followed Anne for what turned out to be over two miles, according to the officer who found her car. I recalled, vaguely, the house at the bottom of a long set of steps. The road now was bordered by verdant green—brambles and trees and heavy brush. Though I searched as I drove, I couldn’t find the place where Anne’s Mercedes went off.
I’d dropped Geoff at his shop so I could use his car. He’d gotten out and patted his pockets and realized he’d left his phone behind. “Don’t forget to come for me at five,” he’d said. “I can’t call to remind you.”
At two thirty I arrived at Marcia’s, a pretty mid-century ranch at the top of a long, sloping tarred drive. Nothing about the house seemed the same except the front door, painted bright yellow, a stand of white birch which that night had been lit in the landscape spotlights. I parked in the street and went up the front walk. Marcia answered the door right away and took my hand. I recognized her dark hair, her smell—like freshly ironed clothes.
“You look healed up,” she said.
“Thanks to you.” The scar on my forehead was all that remained from that night.
She drew me inside and offered me a drink, a glass of wine, a cup of tea or coffee. She had some crackers and cheese set out, and the late afternoon sun came in through wide windows at the back of the house in a cheery way. “Sit down,” she said. “I’ve thought about you a lot since that night.”
I asked her why, and she explained that she’d read the newspaper report of the car and the woman inside. “It was eerie, in a way,” Marcia said. “After you’d told us your friend led you here.”
Much of the night had dissolved out of a desire to forget. “Did I say that?” I said. I took a sip of the wine she’d poured me.
Marcia nodded, emphatically. “Oh, you did! We all heard you!”
“I must have been delirious,” I said.
She seemed a little disappointed. Something dimmed in her eyes. She had wanted me to confirm some ghostly evidence she might share with her guests like a party trick, and I would not. We talked a little about Anne and her work. There once was a showing in a gallery downtown, and Marcia had attended and enjoyed it. Then I told her I had to get going, and she left the room and came back with my clothing in a soft, laundered pile—the sweater I’d had on, the blouse and my jeans. I felt a welling of emotion I couldn’t explain, as if that incarnation of myself was lost forever. Marcia reached out and squeezed my hand. “You were lucky,” she said.
Then she took out an envelope and handed it to me. “This was in the pocket,” she said.
It was Mary Rae’s necklace. I’d lost track of it after the accident. I might drop it back into Geoff’s car for him to find again, its cycle as evidence completed.
“Thank you!” I said. “I thought I’d lost it.”