A grain of doubt and regret, horror and sadness, lodged then deep within her, an oyster’s piece of grit, and it would remain with Luna for the rest of her life. Year after year it would grow layered, polished, and it would with time become something beautiful—a testament to Joe, a cautious tenderness that Luna would apply to her future choices. But in this moment, remembering the office full of talking women and the detectives’ cold eyes, Luna experienced these feelings only as sorrow, as the falling away of Joe’s life and of her own.
