“What do you do?” I take another swig of water, a pause to cue up my backstory. “I’m an import analyst for Europa Global Logistics.” “Europa? As in Jupiter’s moon?” “Very good. Most people don’t know that.”

Outside it’s started to snow, and fat flakes swirl beyond the window, the kind of snow that’s a delight to walk in. Bianca doesn’t look like a woman who delights in snowflakes. “As you can see, I’m settled in here, and I have a new name,” I tell her. “I’m perfectly safe.” “But Diana may be in trouble.” “Diana in trouble?” I laugh. “Yeah, that’s a

“I’m wondering why you seem so calm about this. Why having a dead body in your driveway doesn’t seem to rattle you. It would freak out most people.” “At my age, Officer, nothing much freaks me out anymore.” One side of her mouth twitches up. She has a finely tuned bullshit meter, and it’s telling her I’m not giving her the whole story, but she’s

Ingrid and Lloyd will of course confirm the boring truth: that we met tonight for a potluck dinner and copious wine and a spirited discussion of The Travels of Ibn Battutah. It’s exactly the sort of evening that we retired folks are believed to indulge in. I doubt the police will ask what we are all retired from, because when you are over the hill,

On US Route 1, the coastal road that led back to the village, Jo drove past the curve where a bicyclist fell and fractured his skull last summer, past the cove where a teenage girl drowned. When you live your whole life in one town, you know all the places where tragedy has occurred, because bad memories are as permanent as gravestones.

I walk them through the living room, which I’ve furnished in the style of sensible Yankee thrift. The sofa, upholstered in gray wool, was purchased at a discount furniture store in Bangor. The birchwood coffee table, pine end tables, and spindle-back rocking chair were yard sale finds, lugged home with the help of Declan, who’s always ready to lend

Once again, we are strangers, bound together only by envelopes of cash and a Starbucks gift card, with which he buys coffee to signal when he wants to meet me.

On the platform, I see girls in miniskirts, boys in jackets with football logos, all of them thirsty for their next drink. I am stone-cold sober. I never drink before an operation, and that’s what this feels like. Operation Danny. It’s only dinner and maybe sex. And after that? I know how to disappear. It’s my specialty.

The question still unsettles me when I later drive into town to pick up supplies. Who is asking for directions to my farm? The query could be perfectly innocent, asked by someone in search of the previous owner, unaware that the woman passed away three years ago at age eighty-eight. She was, by all accounts, legendary for her sharp wit and her bad