It is a deliberate, patient act — you stand at the keypad, you clear the old numbers, you choose new ones, you confirm them.

And Shawn had stood at my door, with Faye’s birthday glowing on the little screen, and deleted it, and typed his own phone number in its place.

He had erased my dead wife from the last small thing that still carried her — the four numbers I pressed every time I let myself into the place she loved — and replaced her with himself, as casually as updating a password.

That was the shape of the whole scheme in miniature.