Who is that girl?”

“Nobody.”

“She’s somebody—”

“She’s nobody worth your heart,” I said, and it was the only lie I told that day, and I told it in a stairwell with my hands on a sixty-seven-year-old woman’s arms.

Behind me I could hear Chloe crying — high, gasping, the crying of someone who has not yet understood what has happened to her, only that something has.

Luca did not come out of the room.