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headphones canceled out the sound of Maeve’s voice. “To not be reminded of how I’m failing you as a mother? Please?”
    But Heather was gone, around the corner and up the street. Maeve passed her on the way to the assisted-living facility, trudging back to the house with thoughts of murdering her mother on her mind if the expression on her face was any indication. Maeve kept driving. Hopefully whatever punishment Heather meted out to her mother would be swift and painless.
    Maeve pulled into a spot as close to the entrance of Jack’s former home, Buena del Sol, as she could. Buena del Sol was neither “good” nor “sunny” but it was a lovely facility even if her father had hated it. In his last days, it was clear that his time in the apartment was growing short and that he would have to be moved into the full-care part of the facility; Maeve was glad he died before she had to make that decision. She had put it off for as long as she could.
    The apartment still smelled of him. Even with one good hand and a failing mind, he found time in his morning toilette to put on a half a bottle of cologne—Old Spice—every day. The door handles, the phone receiver, everything he had touched still smelled of the stuff. Maeve stood in the middle of the living room and sniffed deeply. Sure, she could buy a bottle at the CVS and smell it any time she wanted, but smelling it in an environment that he had recently occupied? Those chances were going to disappear as quickly as she could clean out the space, and the sooner the better as far as Mimi Devereaux and Stanley Cummerbund were concerned.
    She started in the bedroom, where Jack’s double bed was made up as if he were living in an army barracks, Angelle’s military precision evident in the tuck of the sheets, the hang of the bedspread. Maeve went through the bedroom slowly. Jo had offered to help clean out the place but would she know to grab the handkerchief that was in his top drawer, the one with the lipstick print—the last surviving link to his wife, Maeve’s mother—and give it to Maeve? Would she keep his uniform from the police department, not knowing that Maeve had no interest in retaining that remnant of his professional life in one of her overstuffed closets? His clothes still hung in neat rows in his own closet; a glass of water, half-drunk, sat on the nightstand almost like he would come back to finish it.
    She sat on the edge of the bed finally and looked around the room. One deep, shaky breath suppressed the sobs that threatened her handle on her emotions. There was her photo—the one that was taken when she graduated from high school—sitting on his dresser. Next to that was his watch, a memento Maeve wanted to keep, an old Timex that really did survive the years and a lot of carelessness on his part. Maeve picked up the phone on the nightstand and breathed deeply; there it was again, that smell. A pair of socks were folded and sat on the floor next to his shoes, the cordovan leather of his loafers gleaming as usual. Maeve made a mental note to slip Angelle an extra hundred dollars in a heartfelt thank-you note; even though her father had been ill in body and spirit, she had helped him retain his dignity, helping him shave and comb his hair every day and letting himself be seen as the man he still was in his own faulty memory: Jack Conlon, the strongest man in the world, dapper and handsome, a bon vivant who was proud of his daughter and who thought she was perfect.
    She missed him already, so deeply; it was like an ache in her gut that resembled a sustained hunger pang.
    She got up and pulled some boxes down from the shelf in the closet. In the first one were Jack’s high school yearbooks from Cardinal Spellman, photos of the day he was appointed to the New York City police department. A small wedding album, black-and-white photos on every page, their existence speaking to a happier time, one that gave no clue to the pain that was on the way.
    The