One very hot day in August 1994, my wife told me she was going to pop over to Rite Aid because she had run out of her sinus medication – back then you needed a doctor’s prescription for it, nowadays we get it straight from the counter, I think. I had finished my writing for the day and offered to go get it for her. She thanked me, but said she also wanted to pick up some fish fillets from the supermarket next door; killing two birds with one stone, as they say. She blew me a kiss from her palm and left. The next time I saw her was on a screen. That’s how they do body identification here in Derry – you don’t usually walk down an underground corridor with green tiles on the walls and long fluorescent lights on the ceiling, and a drawer in the fridge isn’t opened for you to see a naked corpse; you just go into an office with a sign that says NO ENTRY FOR UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL, look at a screen, and say yes or no.

Rite Aid and Shopwell are not even a mile from our house. They’re in a small neighborhood shopping center, which also has a video rental store, the used bookstore called “Pass It On” (they do good business with my old paperback novels), a Radio Shack with electronic devices, and the Fast Foto photo shop. It’s on Up-Mile Hill, at the intersection of Whitcham and Jackson. She parked the car in front of the Blockbuster video store, went into the pharmacy, and was served by Joe Weiser, our pharmacist at the time; now he works at the Rite Aid in Bangor. Before she left, she also bought a chocolate treat with marshmallow pieces, shaped like a mouse. I found it later in her bag. I unwrapped it and ate it, sitting at the kitchen table, with the contents of her red bag spread out in front of me, and I felt as if I were taking Holy Communion.