She has her sense of humour as well. She described a staff member who kept butting into other peoples’ lives by writing, She’s so nosy, she’d peek over a glass wall.

The night Gabe died, Mother made no humorous comments because she knew I was troubled. She did not know why I was troubled. But she realized later, as did I, that had I not been so troubled by what I needed to do that evening, Gabe would still be alive.

2.

I carried Mother’s empty dinner tray to the commissary, then returned to her room. At this point I would usually say goodbye and return home. But that early August night I told Mother I wanted to stay with her for an hour or so. We could watch television together or just absorb the view out her window facing the lake.

Sitting in her room, you can see the small white lighthouse at the end of the canal on the lake side. There is nothing special about the lighthouse. It is white and slim and functional, with a red metal roof and a light that beams across the lake. Lighthouses don’t need to have a unique design to be romantic or picturesque. They are romantic and picturesque by definition. You say the word “lighthouse,” or picture one in your mind, and something within you relaxes because it feels good. Just the idea, even without the reality, feels good to you. Like hearing a railroad whistle in the distance. Or being married to a strong and gentle man.

On summer evenings, people stroll along the pier to the lighthouse or sit fishing on the walls of the canal. You can watch them from Mother’s room. The pleasure boats and freighters come and go on the canal, passing through the beach strip from the bay to the lake or from the lake into the bay. Birds soar through the sky visible from the window—cormorants black and determined, herons silent and haughty, seagulls gliding and screeching, and Canada geese honking in formation. There are worse views in the world.

We sat watching the lake grow golden in the light of the sunset. It was a muggy evening with no breeze, and many people walked along the pier to the lighthouse, where they stood looking east down the length of the lake or chatted with fishermen before walking back to the beach strip.

When it became too dark to see the people clearly, we turned from the window and I switched on the television. We sat for a while, Mother in silence and me commenting on the silliness of first one comedy show, then another, until Mother wrote on her blackboard, Why aren’t you going home?

“Gabe’s not home yet,” I said. “He’s on an investigation. Told me he’d be late.” Which was a lie.

Mother erased her first message and wrote, What’s bothering you?

“Nothing is bothering me,” I said, annoyed. “Tonight I’d rather sit here with you than hang around our empty house, waiting for Gabe.”

She watched me with an expression that said she didn’t believe me, then turned back to the television. We sat quietly until Frieda, one of the night nurses, knocked on the door to say that someone wanted to speak to me on the telephone in the reception area. I don’t have a cell phone. It’s part of my clinging to tradition. I don’t own a computer, either. I use the retirement home’s computer for bookkeeping, but I don’t have one in my house. It’s not that I believe technology is evil. I just believe it encourages evil things.

I followed Frieda to reception and picked up the receiver. It was Gabe.

“Come home and let’s do it,” Gabe said.

“Do what?”

“Get naked in the bushes.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“A glass of wine. Maybe a couple. Been home for over an hour waiting for you.”

“There are people around.”

“Hardly any. Besides, once we’re in the bushes you can’t see anything. It’s dark out. Soon it’ll be pitch black.”

“I’m with Mother.”

“I know.” He sounded relieved. “I know. I love you, Josie.”

“Gabe—”

“Please come home. It’s not just … there’s something else.”

“I know.”

“How can you know? I love you so much, Josie—”

“Gabe—”

“I’ll get the blanket. It’s good wine. Chewy Merlot, the kind you like.”

“Gabe—”

He hung up.

I wanted fresh air. I walked down the hall to a set of French doors that opened onto a small balcony overlooking the lake, where I stood clenching the rail and staring at nothing. Sometimes we make fools of ourselves without intending to, and sometimes we do it with full knowledge of our foolishness. I counted cars passing on Lakeshore Road. I counted the jokes Gabe had told to make me laugh. I counted the places we had made love. When I felt foolish enough, I returned to Mother’s room.

“Gabe wants me to come home,” I told Mother.

She frowned and waved her hand at the door, meaning, Go, go.

“He’s been drinking.” I settled in the chair.

Mother shrugged.

“I’ll go when this program is over.”

Mother sat watching me, not the television set. I stayed to the end of the silly comedy, and through three commercials, almost half an hour. Then I rose and walked to Mother’s chair. I kissed her forehead and squeezed her arm. “I may be back tomorrow,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

She looked at me with concern. I have never been able to fool Mother.

I WALKED OUT OF THE RETIREMENT HOME into the summer evening’s warm, damp darkness, something I have always enjoyed. My sister, Tina, hates humid weather, especially at night. She tells me that anybody who likes warm, humid evenings is longing for a womb, and she’s too old for wombs, including her own.

I crossed the road to the beach trail I had followed from my home and walked south. It is almost a mile along the lakeshore to the canal, where I crossed the lift bridge on the pedestrian walkway, traffic flowing past me, then turned onto the lakeside lane. It’s shorter along the road, but that would take me home sooner. I didn’t want sooner. I wanted later.

Ahead of me, small white lights were moving in patterns both random and logical, like a cloud of insects, and red and blue flashes reflected from trees on Beach Boulevard. The location of the lights was as distant as our house, Gabe’s and mine.

Someone had fallen from their bicycle or their in-line skates onto the boardwalk, I thought. Crazy kids, out too late at night. They move so fast, tearing along in darkness. Perhaps they struck someone walking.

Two larger white lights shone on the lake side of the boardwalk. Their beams moved and broke erratically, making sudden flashes through arbitrary darkness, and I realized they were shining from within the caragana bushes where Gabe and I had made love last summer, and where we had promised to return some warm night.

I began running, past other people attracted to the lights, coming from their homes and their cars, and some from the water’s edge. As I approached, I saw a mass of onlookers standing behind yellow plastic tape and uniformed police officers, the crowd whispering among themselves, the younger ones adding low laughter to their words. I elbowed my way through them all until I reached the yellow tape, and when I stepped under the tape a uniformed cop approached with his hand raised.

“I live here,” I said. “This is my house. Where is my husband?”

“Josie.” A man in shirt and tie, his large body topped with an almost hairless head, oversized nose, and thick lips, walked toward me.

“Walter,” I said, “where’s Gabe?”

Walter Freeman was the chief of detectives, a man neither Gabe nor I liked very much. Walter held a notebook in one hand, and he placed the other on my shoulder. “Josie,” he said, “go and wait in the house.”

“No.” I pulled away from his touch. I wanted no one touching me, especially Walter. “Where is Gabe?”