Connie’s mood began to lighten. I did not know if those two events were related or not. But one thing was certain, and that was that Connie was indeed coming out of her funk. Her period of mourning was by no means over; she’d still burst into tears whenever thoughts of Raymond grew too strong. Nights were the hardest for her; she took to sleeping in a bed other than the one she’d shared with him. But that enervating numbness that had surrounded Raymond’s death and funeral was dissipating; I could feel it slipping away from me as well. Before Annette left I tried to get her to tell me about Theo Decker’s kidnapping; I didn’t have the heart to ask Connie. But Annette made me feel I’d committed some inexcusable faux pas even by asking. That was an ugly and frightening period in all their lives, she said, and they’d coped with it by not dwelling on it. It was over and done with. Sure it was. Like hell. For one thing, it would never be over for Connie; even the more recent death of her husband couldn’t blot out the earlier heartache of losing a child.
