We had not reached the grave when Elke Trask stepped into our path.

Ten years had not touched her, or she had paid a great deal to make it seem so.

She had been at the edge of my marriage for its last two years, a family friend of the Lockridges, beautiful and patient and always somehow present, and I had been too naive to understand what her patience was for.

She looked at my children with an expression I can only describe as appraisal, the way you’d look at a problem you thought you’d already solved and found back on your desk.

“Well,” she said, pitching her voice to carry.