prams down sidewalks where drunks had relieved themselves hours before. Crime was common; cars and homes were broken into, muggings were not unheard of, and recently a couple of young women had simply disappeared. Susan and I lived in homes just a mile apart but somehow on different planets, and I ran to Susan’s whenever I needed to escape mine.

While we talked, Susan was busy baking, gathering ingredients for crust. “Which detective did you talk to?”

I saw him again, standing on our front stoop. Behind him, two uniformed men crawled on the curb, sifting through street soot and gutter slush. “Ms. Hayes?” he’d asked. “Detective Nick Stiles.” He’d flashed his badge.

“Stiles?” Susan repeated. “Young guy?”

At the time, I hadn’t considered his age. Now, trying to estimate, I recalled my first impression of the detective at my door. He’d checked the spelling of my name, Z-O-E, H-as-in-Harry-A-Y-E-S, assessing me quickly, up and down. I’d felt his eyes register each inch of a taller than average, still slender woman with strands of gray streaking her long hair, lingering a bit too long on the full lips and smallish but nice breasts. I bristled at the memory but stayed with it long enough to pull out the image of his face. Yes, there it was, with pale blue eyes that were a tad too intense. A well-defined jaw. A scar near the cheekbone. Sandy hair flecked with gray. A strong face that wasn’t quite symmetrical.

“Not really. Forty. Forty-five at most. Our age.”

“Hmmm. I don’t know him. I’ll ask around.” She gulped some tea. “What did he ask you? What did you tell him?”

What did I tell him? What did he ask me? Why was the telling of this afternoon’s events so difficult? Why was I so flustered and incoherent? Susan waited, wanting to hear what happened. But she was acting as my friend, not interrogating me as a criminal attorney; she was measuring shortening for a pie, not weighing evidence for a case. I wasn’t under oath. I could relax.

So my mind plowed through the detective’s visit, scanning for highlights. I heard myself tell him that I was forty-one years old, had lived in the house for thirteen years. That, no, I wasn’t married; Michael and I had divorced about five years ago. That I lived alone with my daughter, Molly, who was five and a half. I could skip all that. And I could skip the expression on Stiles’s face as he did the math. And the part when I’d blurted out that I’d adopted Molly after Michael had gone.

“Well?” she looked up without breaking her pace. The events of my day didn’t slow her down. Susan mixed flour and shortening, pounded out the dough. She was, as usual, spinning in her kitchen, spilling this and that, slapping ingredients together, creating chaos that would transform, magically, into something delectable.

I reached for my coffee mug, and my arm brought to mind another arm. Stiles’s. His large hand had emerged from a dark woolen sleeve, his arm lifting gingerly, picking up the thing with a tweezer-like appliance and dropping it into a Baggie. Again I heard the small, plastic thud and saw Stiles’s brow wrinkle. Yes, this was it, the answer Susan wanted. The part where Stiles talked about the missing women.

“He asked about the nannies? What did he say?” She straightened and looked at me, shaking her hair out of her eyes.

“He asked if I knew them. What I’d heard about them.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I guess he thinks it might belong to one of them.” I squeezed the mug, inhaled steam, and concentrated on the kitchen, the smell of cinnamon, the energy pulsing around me.

Susan’s kitchen, unlike mine, was huge and alive. Mine was closet-sized, a detail off the entranceway, usually littered with takeout cartons and pizza boxes. I couldn’t stand the messy monotony of preparing meals and never made anything that took more than fifteen minutes. For Molly, I fixed eggs, grilled cheese, an occasional lamb chop, a hundred variations of pasta. But Susan actually cooked. Thoughtlessly, effortlessly, as a way of life, a technique for stress reduction, a ritual of being. Even now, while we discussed dismemberment, she rolled out piecrust on her thick butcher-block island. I sat close, huddling under flour clouds.

From time to time, Susan’s children wandered in with Molly, circling, swiping sugared apple slices, and scooting into the next room to plop in front of the blaring large-screen TV. Spigots turned on and off. The refrigerator hummed.

I watched Susan