He tried to keep cool, but he could hear her shrieking through the door as she raced downstairs and fumbled with the locks. When the door finally opened, their eyes met, but only briefly before she pulled him inside and buried her head in his chest. Her cries came from a place where nothing was left. Deep and dark and all the way through. She kept repeating words that were difficult to understand. Eventually, Matt realized that she was begging him to say that Kevin wasn’t really dead. That the man she loved could be brought back.

He led her into the kitchen. After hitting the light switch with his elbow, he guided her over to the breakfast table and eased her into a chair. When she looked up at him, she seemed so helpless, so wounded, that he couldn’t hold the gaze.

“What happened, Matt? Tell me. You were meeting for dinner. Your new job. It was supposed to be a celebration.”

“You want a drink? A cup of coffee?”

She shook her head and wiped her cheeks, her soft voice breaking up. “Tell me what happened to Kevin. Tell me what happened.”

Matt spotted a box of tissues on the counter by the sink. As he reached for it, he noticed a pregnancy test kit on the windowsill and thought he might lose it.

“I don’t know, Laura,” he said. “We think he was shot during a holdup.”

She cocked her head, as if she didn’t understand. “For money?”

Her voice was so faint. Matt nodded and sat down beside her, watching her struggle to put it together.

“But Kevin never carried a lot of cash,” she said.

“Is there anyone I can call? Anyone who could come over and be with you?”

“He never carried a lot of cash,” she repeated quietly.

Her dirty blond hair was tangled from sleep, her deep blue eyes wet as rain. She was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of cotton pajama bottoms with images of flowers and rainbows and pots of gold. Matt thought about that test kit on the windowsill and wondered if she was pregnant. He wished he hadn’t seen it.

“Do you know who did it?” she managed.

“We think so,” he said in a gentle voice. “But he’s never shot anyone before.”

“Someone saw him?”

Matt shook his head. “It’s early. We’re still working on it.”

Laura closed her eyes and started weeping again. After several moments she began to speak as if she were alone in the room.

“I was so worried about him . . . so worried . . . while he was away . . . I waited and worried . . . I watched the news every night and had nightmares that he wasn’t gonna come home . . . that I’d never see him again . . .