A redheaded woman gazes out the window of her second-story bedroom and observes a moving truck entering her street. It is night, the sky is a blurry, thick navy blue, and the sound of the ocean lapping onto shore behind the house is like static on an old radio. She is applying face cream to her cheeks and under her jawline, water-based, rose-scented. Behind her on the bed, a man with fair hair and a narrow face lies with his back against the headboard, scrolling on a brightly-lit tablet.

The Lisbon house has sold, says the woman without turning from the window.

The man makes no indication that he’s heard her except for tilting his head slightly to the right. As if having seen this motion and correctly interpreted it, she continues, The house where the murder-suicide happened. I don’t believe it, someone is moving in now.

It was going to happen at some point, says the man from the bed. They kept lowering the price. Great view, he adds, almost as an afterthought.

She watches the truck stop before the house at the end of the street. I can’t imagine living somewhere like that, she says absently, pushing the sleeves of her nightgown up and rubbing the excess cream onto her wrists now. He killed his wife, didn’t he, and their child?

Stabbed them, says the man. He taps something on his screen, pulling up a colorful interface with floating candy icons. And it was a baby, I think.

Damn, the woman says, her eyes still on the truck. The driver’s door opens and a figure steps onto the driveway. She moves closer to the glass and sees the person, a dark-haired woman, standing very still on the curb, her face angled upwards like she might be waiting for something to change, or a sign of some kind. She looks where the woman seems to be looking and there is nothing but the moon, fat and white tonight like a wheel of cheese. After a while the woman closes the truck door and enters the house. Then the street is silent, motionless again.

Strange, says the redheaded woman. She draws the curtains and climbs onto her side of the bed. You know, I remember that day. All those police cars. There was an officer, a grown man, throwing up into the bushes. She adjusts her pillow, flipping and turning it different ways and finally settling with it in its original position. You’d have to be pretty crazy to move in there, knowing what happened.

The man taps something on the screen and there is an explosion of colors and candy wrappers. Or brave, maybe, he says.

She lies flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. Or desperate, she says.

The man looks at her. Desperate for what? he asks, but she says nothing, and he returns to the screen. After a few more minutes he sets the tablet aside and turns off the lights. She moves closer to him, and he angles himself so she can reach his face with her hand. In the dark she presses her ear against his chest, like she is listening for any irregularities in his heartbeat. Several moments pass. Then, as if answering some unspoken question, she says, His wife and their child.

Then himself, he says.

⇀

The next morning the man leaves the house in a freshly-ironed white shirt and dark blue trousers, squinting intently at his phone. He climbs into his sedan, sets his coffee in the cup holder, and sniffs. Glancing around, he notices a fresh grease stain on his shirt cuff. He mouths the word “fuck,” frowns at his phone one last time, and pulls out of the driveway.

A little over an hour later the front door of the house opens again and the redheaded woman steps outside. She is wearing a white camisole and a long airy skirt, holding onto a wicker basket of blueberry muffins. In her purse, which she has left in the kitchen, is a folded receipt for the muffins from the grocery store. She brushes off the front of her shirt and begins striding down the street in the direction of the house that everybody in their town refers to as “the Lisbon house.”

The moving truck is still in the driveway and all the curtains of the house are drawn shut. She pauses before the wraparound porch, nudges a toe in the sand that has accumulated around its base. There is more sand than soil where they live, blown in from the shore and attaching itself stubbornly to surfaces like glitter, and it is always getting in the crevices of her kitten heels, the creases in her handbags. It burrows into car tires and finds its way into eyes, fur, food. She marches up the porch and checks her reflection in the window, bares her teeth to ensure her lipstick hasn’t smudged. Then she squares her shoulders and raps her knuckles against the front door. A minute passes and she knocks again, more persistently this time, and the door opens. It is dark inside and the face of the woman who has answered is half hidden in shadow. The redheaded woman raises the wicker basket and gives a self-effacing smile, as if to acknowledge that what she is doing is objectively odd and outdated but she’s decided to do so anyway with sincerity, perhaps even concern. She gestures to the moving truck, then the house, making a hand motion to indicate the vastness of its size, and asks a question. The woman inside the house makes no move to step outside or invite the other woman in. Instead she answers quickly, glancing behind her shoulder and turning back with a shrug as if to signify that she’s alright with whatever has sparked the visitor’s concern. The redheaded woman clasps her hands behind her back, picking at her cuticles distractedly. Finally she brightens and asks another question, gesturing once again with a manicured hand in the direction of the ocean. The woman inside the house does not smile as she responds, moving her jaw around as if to displace some discomfort she is close to overtly displaying. The other woman’s smile wavers and she too gives a shrug before turning to leave, the wicker basket still hanging from her wrist.

Ten, fifteen seconds pass and the redheaded woman reaches the driveway. The front door shudders, then opens completely, and the woman inside calls something out, her speech short and terse but not unfriendly. The redheaded woman whips around. She marches back up the driveway and steps confidently inside the house. Before closing the door the other woman pokes her head out and glances around, a blur of dark hair and pale skin, as if to check that no one is watching.

⇀

At half past twelve on a Wednesday afternoon, a woman sits at a desk on the third floor of a shared office, scrolling through the messages in her inbox. Her dark hair is braided in a loose plait down her back, and she is wearing a gray blouse tucked into black slacks. Using a finger on her trackpad she clicks on an unread message and skims through the attached document, and without any changes to her expression or posture she closes it and moves on to the next unopened message. Occasionally she shuts her eyes and touches her eyelids lightly as if to physically ground herself between greeting the blocks of text, which vary from having dozens of quotation marks in one paragraph to having little to no punctuation at all. When she has skimmed through all of the newly revised drafts she takes a ballpoint pen and writes something on a pink sticky note, her mouth moving slightly with the words. Then she checks the time on her wristwatch and signs out of the computer.

Just before one o’ clock she tells her colleagues she is going to lunch, and they smile and wave at her from behind their screens. In the seat furthest from the window at the café downstairs she eats a breakfast sandwich with one hand and flips through a copy of Anna Karenina with another. Twice she takes out her phone and opens a social media feed only to evidently lose interest and return to the book, as if the action is a nervous tick or an old habit. As she is finishing her sandwich she notices a redheaded woman around her age entering the café and immediately heading in her direction. Her alarmed expression quickly recedes into a wan smile.

Busy day, Margaret? she asks as the woman sits down across from her and drops her shopping bags at their feet. None of my clothes fit anymore, says the woman named Margaret, smoothing down the front of her dress. Am I showing already? Solemnly, the dark-haired woman shakes her head. She inquires about a man named Paul, where is he? At work, Margaret says flatly. And he won’t take time off to look at dresses with me. Of course, he has the time to play Candy Crush.

The woman makes a sympathetic sound, which Margaret seems to interpret as encouragement to continue. She begins an anecdote concerning unusual food cravings and fluoride toothpaste. The woman wipes the corners of her mouth with a napkin, nodding thoughtfully as if to assure Margaret that her story is special, meaningful. Finally Margaret reaches across the table to hold both of her hands. The woman stops moving at the physical contact, and her expression becomes fixed, like she has become a wax figurine of herself.

… is next month, Margaret is saying. I’m sorry, the woman says, gently pulling her hands away. What’s next month? Your birthday, says Margaret. You’ll celebrate, won’t you? Oh, says the woman. She balls up her napkin in one hand. I forgot I mentioned that to you. No, I don’t really celebrate my birthdays. Margaret responds immediately, without any discernible surprise: Why not? You’ve been here for a while now, you have friends to celebrate with you. The woman leans back in her seat, looking at Margaret neutrally. Well, that’s not really why I don’t celebrate them. She checks her wristwatch and tells Margaret she needs to go, her lunch hour is over. Margaret brushes a crumb off the table and nods.

For the rest of the afternoon at work the woman responds to the messages she opened earlier. Multiple times her reply begins with an apology on behalf of an R. Anderson, and more than once she pastes the same two-line response, changing only a pronoun here or moving a comma there. Every once in a while a colleague interrupts with a work-related question or a story addressed to her corner of the office and she responds accordingly, but otherwise work continues, slowly and quietly.

Around five o’clock, the woman gathers her things and begins to tell her remaining colleagues goodbye. A man in the hallway asks if she will come with them to a place called Finnegan’s for drinks, please, as it is a tradition and she has never been able to make it? As he speaks a petite woman wearing fig earrings beside him nods, teases the woman about her unavailability in a good-natured manner. She stands before them with her coat over one arm, her smile watery, reluctant. Several of her other colleagues are grouped around the elevator, donning their jackets and chattering excitedly about leaving work. The woman apologizes, she still has several things to get done after moving into her new house, she supposes this is adulthood, isn’t it? She is received by chuckles, a swift, searching look from the woman with the fig earrings, which she ignores. In the elevator she stands in the corner, apart from the others in conversation, wearing the same placid smile. After getting in her car she watches her colleagues start toward the bar on foot, then starts the engine.

The drive from her office to her new home takes seven minutes. She parks in her garage and enters the house through the door of the laundry room; she never uses the front door. Around sunset all the lights in the house are turned off except for the lantern on the back porch. The chipped French doors glide open without sound and the woman steps outside in a robe and nightgown. She settles on the porch swing, runs a finger down the rough rope supporting its weight, and looks inscrutably at her corner of the beach, a stretch of sand, a lip of white foam, a sea reflecting the clementine color of the sky. From the right pocket of her robe she pulls out Anna Karenina and from the left, a revolver. It is a .38 Special, glistening and perfect. As she reads she touches the metal absently, as if she is admiring its coldness, its hardness, its impenetrability, or perhaps to remind herself that the choice is there, always there. She continues to read even as the sky and sea become one solid black entity, even when she has to bring the page close to her face to see clearly. Her hand never leaves the gun. Five bullets in total, but she is a good shot, and one is all she would need.

⇀

On Friday night Margaret is lying on the couch in her den, a weighted blanket pulled to her chin, her phone nestled between her ear and shoulder. The television is playing American Beauty and Kevin Spacey is a fast-food employee. On the armchair to her left the fair-haired man appears to be asleep, his head drooping against his chest, the glass of scotch half-empty on the glass coffee table in front of him.

It really is a shame, she is saying in a low voice. I mean, we were all so close in college, weren’t we? I remember when she had the idea to make those friendship bracelets. The corners of her lips twitch. I don’t know, maybe. Things would be very different now, that’s for sure. The voice on the other end responds enthusiastically, a tinny, high-pitched warbling, and Margaret glances at the unconscious man beside her. I remember, she murmurs. We were so different then. Rich red rose petals flood the television screen and she watches with her eyes half closed. You know, when we were younger, I had this idea of the perfect person for me, and as I got older I kept thinking I had to lower my expectations, remove the rose-tinted glasses and all that. With Paul I didn’t have to. She glances at the man again, this time almost sheepishly. She kicks a leg free from under the blanket and pokes his knee once. Paul? she whispers. She returns to her previous speaking volume, smiling to herself. Sorry. You know how much money he spent on Candy Crush last month? I might make him throw that tablet out after the baby comes. Her voice softens, becomes more tender at the word baby. The person on the other end says something in a teasing tone. She throws her head back and laughs.

The man named Paul startles upright. His glasses, which had been hanging precariously at the tip of his nose, fall into his lap. Hold on, Margaret says into the phone. Paul, did you throw out the garbage yet? He is rubbing his eye with his fingers, not quite awake. Paul, love, that garbage needs to be thrown out. I just woke up, he says thickly. I’m pregnant, Margaret says, and Paul stands and lurches toward the garage. Into the phone again, she continues, Yes, I love saying that. How is Lisa, anyhow? Have you two given adoption any more thought? She nestles deeper into the blankets and closes her eyes.

A door slams somewhere in the house. Margaret’s eyes fly open. Hey, babe, Paul calls out. Didn’t you say that the girl who moved in down the street is alone? No family? Margaret struggles upright. Yes, she told me so herself. Why? Under the shifting rays of the television screen her skin seems to become paler, more translucent. Paul, she calls out, Why are you asking? Answer me. There’s someone outside her house, Paul says. I think it’s a man, he says.

Margaret murmurs an excuse into her phone and ends the call. She presses the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. What’s he doing? she calls out. Is he doing anything? Paul appears in the doorway to the den. No, not from what I saw. He was just standing there in her driveway. Should we do something? Instinctively she lays a hand over her stomach, where there is the slightest bulge. I don’t know, she says. What if it’s nothing, what if he’s a delivery man or something? He shifts his weight from one foot to another. No one makes deliveries at midnight, he says. What are you doing now? he asks. Margaret has pulled out her phone again. I’m calling her, she says.

After a few rings she picks up the remote and turns the television off. Paul clears his throat, begins cleaning his glasses with the hem of his shirt. Finally Margaret lets out a loud exhale that dissolves into a laugh. Hey, she says into the phone. I know it’s late, but is everything alright? A short response in the pitch of mild surprise. Margaret touches her temple. Well, Paul thought he saw somebody standing outside your house a moment ago. He was taking out the trash. Are you sure you’re alone? Did you look outside? There is a long pause, followed by a brief murmur of an answer. Margaret’s frown deepens. People don’t jog at this time of night. Alright. Well, if you’re sure. Okay, I’ll talk to you later. Goodnight.

She drops the phone back into her lap. I’m sure it’s nothing, says Paul. The room is quiet without the television playing. They look at each other and there is a dullness to Margaret’s gaze now, as if she had been expecting a different response, a different version of the person in front of her. You go on up without me, she says. I’ll be up in a moment.

After she hears the bedroom door close she untangles herself from the blankets and pads into the kitchen. Somewhere in the house a window has been left open and the wind whistling through it is like a child humming. Pulling her robe tighter around herself, she steps out onto the back porch and closes the French doors behind her. The moon is partially hidden by a cloud tonight and there is nothing to visibly separate the sky from the ocean, nothing to draw a line through the abyss except for the dark outline of the pier halfway down the beach. She lights a cigarette and rests her arms against the porch railing. Night has drained the world of color. Her face, white like the moon and the rolling slices of the waves, appears sepulchral. In the stillness and silence she could be the last woman in the world.

She brings the cigarette to her lips and pauses. The porch light of the Lisbon house has just turned on. Margaret watches the dark-haired woman leave through a pair of French doors just as she had, and then continue to make her way down the steps into the sand. She sucks in a breath and becomes completely still. The woman walks to the end of the pier and leans against the railing. Margaret jerks her arm up to tap the ash that has built up on her cigarette, and her chest refills with air as if she had been certain the other woman could see her, would mimic her movements sarcastically. Instead she turns and dives off of the pier in one swift motion, like a sparrow off a tree branch, and vanishes into the sea without sound. A cry escapes Margaret before she can stop it, and the shrillness of her voice seems to skip across the surface of the ocean like a stone. She holds onto the railing, breathing heavily, eyes darting around the pier in search of more movement. Then she looks back at the Lisbon house. The doors are wide open, the white curtains billowing outwards like pillars of smoke. Margaret ashes the cigarette without taking a drag. In the distance, much too far for her to see, the woman pops up for air.

⇀

Two weeks after Margaret’s phone call, the woman sits in a leather booth at a bar called Finnegan’s, nursing a glass tumbler between her hands. The square tables around her have been pushed together to create one long table. On every wall there are rusty license plates, black and white photographs of sailors, street signs that look to be stolen. Rain lashes against the windows and the sound is drowned out by the laughter inside the bar.

So Dennis tells me, ‘You’d better get that out of here before Leah sees,’ a bearded man with reddening cheeks is saying. He punctuates his sentence with a nod to a blond woman at the end of the table. And the three of us just start laughing, I mean, can you imagine? The blond woman adjusts her carrot earrings. Well, Dennis wasn’t laughing, she says. No, the bearded man says, turning to the man to his right. Dennis was trying not to puke himself, wasn’t he? The man named Dennis waves a large hand dismissively. It’s called emetophobia, and I wouldn’t wish it on any of you. There is more laughter. A few of them stand and go to the bar to get more drinks. Against the orange glow of the bar lights their backs are like cutouts of people, rough silhouettes snipped out of black cloth.

The woman pulls the silver chain of her bracelet taut against the skin on her wrist. The only indication that she is listening to the conversation comes from her slightly inclined head, as if she finds something anchoring in her colleagues’ voices, their words. She glances up when several of them return from the bar at once. It’s awful, just awful, another woman is saying. What’s awful? she asks. It’s the first time she’s spoken all evening and she has to raise her voice to be heard. What’s awful, Edith?

We just saw on the news, the woman named Edith says. They’re not arresting those college boys, the ones who did those awful things last year. Nothing is being done to them.

She wasn’t here then, Dennis interjects. To the woman he says, Last winter a couple of kids from the university were arrested for sexual assault. It was a huge scandal. They were supposed to go on trial this year, but I guess not.

Are they not? Leah asks. She catches the woman’s eye and addresses her next question to the table. Well, is it so surprising? Look at the demographic of this town.

As the others begin to weigh in the woman leans back in her seat and lets her eyes roam over the license plates on the walls, as if satisfied with this turn in conversation and now content to let it take its course. Very lightly and probably unconsciously she mouths the state names she comes across: California. West Virginia. New York. How terrifying, Edith is saying now. How do you go back to normalcy knowing the person who did that to you is still out there? She finishes her espresso martini and leaves her hand curled around the glass stem. I mean, even if the same person doesn’t return, just knowing what’s out there, what people are capable of? The bearded man folds a stained cocktail napkin in half. Men, he says. You mean men, Edith. Damn right I mean men, Edith says sharply. The woman looks at her with a vaguely grim expression, as if this response from Edith was something she was ready to hear but was not altogether hoping for. Somewhere in the kitchen a plate shatters; none of their heads turn. We just have to be careful, Leah says drily. That’s all we can do, isn’t it? Be careful about who we surround ourselves with. Can’t be too careful, says Dennis, raising his glass to his mouth. At this the woman says, Can’t you? His drink hovers midair. Sorry? She lifts and drops a shoulder. I don’t think we should stop doing the things we want to do just because of what’s out there. Those girls on the news, I hope they don’t let the thought of their attackers become a part of their lives even after they’re gone. She uses her pinky finger to trace the rim of her cup. That’s no way to live, she says.

After another round of drinks a few of the woman’s colleagues start to leave, faces flushed and hands gripping onto the backs of chairs for support. The speakers above them begin playing a slower song with heavier bass. There are so many people crowded by the bar now that very little light reaches their corner of the room.

Hey, Edith says suddenly. Is that Jack out there? The woman sits up and gazes out the window where the others are also looking. The glass is streaked silver with rain and beyond it the street is dark, a blur of car headlights and blinking neon store signs. Where? Dennis asks in a disinterested voice. Standing next to the bus stop, says Edith. I thought he drove here. That’s funny, Dennis says. Looks like he’s staring right at you, Leah. Leah turns from the window, stirs the straw in her drink once, clockwise. Just some guy, she says. I don’t see him, the woman says. Just then Edith asks if anyone else had received an email from Human Resources this morning about something or other. Her question triggers a collective groan around the table. Leah glances over her shoulder offhandedly. Oh, he’s gone now, she tells the woman. I think it was just some random guy. Right, the woman replies. There are a lot of those.

⇀

On the wraparound porch of the Lisbon house, early evening, late August: two women saying goodnight to each other after a walk down the pier, both holding their shoes by their straps, both faces flushed from the sun. The redheaded woman’s expression nervous, full of something about to bubble over, her linen dress creaseless, timeless; the dark-haired woman’s expression weary but relaxed, relieved of some previous burden, still in her office attire with the bottoms of her tapered trousers rolled up and dampened. The elegant French doors folded closed with no indication of who or what is in inside the house where Martin Lisbon killed his wife and child and then himself over three years ago: only the dim reflection on the glass of two women roughly the same height and age, newly friends, formerly mostly-neighbors. The dark-haired woman’s lips parted mid-thank-you for dinner, the redheaded woman’s right arm reaching for the door handle. A sleight of hand, a well-intentioned white lie. Genuine care and the threat of strangeness lingering around them.

And thank you for understanding that about me, Margaret, the dark-haired woman is saying. You know, that I’m sort of a private person and all that.

Immediately following her words: the porch light flicking on, the doors bursting open and releasing an explosion of celebratory noise from within. Over a dozen faces waiting just past the threshold, already grinning widely, knowingly. Smell of fresh fruit and cream. A chorus of voices, familiar and unfamiliar, loud enough to have reached the women if they were still at the end of the pier, shouting in unison: SURPRISE! Happy birthday, Alice!

Oh, Alice says, blinking rapidly. Seagull squawking somewhere behind her as if in imitation of her shock. Margaret’s hand squeezing her wrist now in unspoken apology. Hello everyone.

⇀

A quarter to midnight: Margaret still at the kitchen sink, scrubbing persistently at a spot of hardened frosting on an antique plate. On the floor around her, scattered, multicolored confetti, a few red balloons, the discarded cork of a champagne bottle. The interior of the house, save for the birthday decorations, minimalistic to the point of appearing barren; no family photos, knick-knacks, rugs. A bookcase stacked full of memoirs and classics, an abstract painting of an intertwined couple, a large leafy fern. Cardboard boxes in the living room waiting to be unsealed and unpacked, rapidly collecting a layer of dust. People Alice has known for little over than two months still milling about the living room and kitchen, drunk on red wine and strawberry cake. Paul entering the kitchen now with a stack of dirty plates, his tie loosened and thrown over one shoulder.

I feel terrible, Margaret says without looking up from the sink. I knew I shouldn’t have thrown a surprise party. He sets the dishes on the counter, watches her face with an intense focus. She seems happy now, he says. She’s been laughing a lot. They both look in the direction of the foyer, where Alice is saying goodbye to guests. She’d changed into a white sundress earlier and has Margaret’s shawl draped loosely over her arms, smiling and waving distractedly, murmuring, Thanks for coming, thanks for coming, as if something in her has short-circuited and caused her to speak and behave in a loop. Margaret scratches her nose with her wrist and leaves a soap bubble by her lip. You didn’t hear her earlier, she says in a low voice. She was telling me about her life before she moved here, how she was seeing this man, and he turned out to be a horrible human being. He wouldn’t leave her alone, you know. Got into his head that they were meant to be with each other forever, that she could never leave him or he would kill himself. Her hand is trembling as she turns off the water. He said he loved her so much he couldn’t leave her alone, he wouldn’t let her do anything by herself, talk to anyone, see anyone without him knowing. He watched her. She stops, her chest heaving, cheeks now bright red. Fucking scumbag, Paul says. And she tried everything, you know, she deleted all of her social media, she changed jobs, she changed towns, for fuck’s sake, Margaret says. She got a fucking gun. Paul reaches forward, lays a hand on her arm. She turns toward him, tips her chin up. You would never do that, would you? she asks quietly. If I told you — if I told you something you did was hurting me, and I wanted you to please stop, you would stop, wouldn’t you? He looks at her plainly. With his index finger, very gently pops the soap bubble by her mouth. If you told me something I was doing was hurting you, I would stop and never do it again, he says. That goes without question.

They move apart at the sound of the front door closing. Alice’s footsteps in the living room, drawing closer. I’ll see you at home, Margaret says. I can help clean up, he says. I won’t bother you two. She looks at him with the same intensity. I know. It’s not really about that. He nods once. On his way out of the house, says to Alice: Goodnight, Alice, and happy birthday. And her, gazing at him with slightly rounded eyes, as if caught off guard by his leaving without her prompting: Goodnight, Paul. Thank you.

With the dishwasher going, the floor swept, and two bulging trash bags set by the front door, Margaret plops down on one end of the living room couch. On the other, Alice lifts her head from her hand and smiles, genuinely. Her bottom incisors, which overlap just the slightest. Thank you for staying behind and helping clean, she says. Don’t thank me, Margaret says. She rests a hand against her stomach, presses down lightly like she is applying pressure to a wound. Alice, I’m sorry. I should’ve listened when you said — But Alice is shaking her head, slowly first, and then faster like a petulant child until Margaret is laughing and reaching out to to still her. It’s fine, she says, her cheeks flushed from the exertion. Tonight was good. You’re good. A sidelong glance, a contented sigh. Margaret asks if she’d like any more wine, and Alice says yes, she thinks she’ll have one more glass. Let’s have it on the porch swing, she says, standing. I’ll put out the garbage first, says Margaret. She watches Alice float toward the kitchen and touches the part of her face where the soap bubble had been, where Paul had last touched her, lightly and likely without thinking. Then she stands and goes to collect the garbage bags.

When Margaret returns from the driveway the doors to the back porch are thrown open, a bottle of wine uncorked on the kitchen counter. Past the white curtains the sky is a great expanse of obsidian and the moon a perfect crescent, like the lunula on an infant’s thumb. The porch swing is creaking. But when she steps outside it is empty, rocking only slightly on its own as if someone had just leapt off of it. Two glasses of wine, one untouched and the other half empty, balanced delicately on the porch banister. Alice standing on the steps, back rigid like a statue, and before her a man on his knees, head hung low so that his dark hair obscures his face. Alice with a gun in her hand, the barrel inches from the man’s forehead. Slowly, almost dreamily, Margaret turning and closing the doors behind her, as if to hide the scene from any lingering party guests. She looks up at the sky, away from Alice and the man, at the moon, waiting. Do it, she says. Do it so it feels real.