Susan will tell herself later that she heard the ambulance scream past her window without guessing that it had anything to do with her, but the fact of the matter is that she would have been too late even if the siren did enter her conscious thought right that moment. She will hear her own furious, desperate, bargaining heartbeat over and above anything the police or fellow mourners or people who have never known loss can say to her.

And then, months or years in the future, she will know what she needs and ask one of her boyfriends to drive her to the seaside, where she will strip down to nothing, surge beneath the waves, listen to the voiceless murmur of the departed one last time, and finally leave a second set of footprints pointing away from salt water.