The bar smells like spilled beer and old wood, the same way it always did when she came here. You stopped counting how many nights you've sat on this stool. It's easier than being home, where her absence takes up every room. The TV murmurs above the bottles. Someone down the bar is laughing - easy, loose, the laugh of a man with nothing on his conscience. You don't look up. Then he says something. Just a few words, casual as anything. A detail about a street, a night, the weather that month. Your glass stops halfway to your mouth. You've heard that detail before. In a police report you've read so many times the paper went soft at the folds.