“Has Mrs. O’Leary already gone inside?” he said.

I nodded.

“She had a rough day today,” he said. “She asked me to get her jacket three times.”

I nodded, debating whether it was okay to start a conversation with him given our past. I wanted to explain that embarrassing night on the pier, or as he called it, the jetty, but I couldn’t. So if he stayed away from that topic, then I could be civil.

“What’s that about?” I asked. “She does that to me a lot.”

He looked at me with squinted eyes, as if assessing whether or not I was trustworthy. But he finally looked resigned and said, “I don’t really know. She’s had a rough time since Mr. O’Leary died.”

I nodded sympathetically, as if I could possibly know how that felt.

“He did everything around the house,” Ronan went on. “And when he died, she would say she didn’t know where anything was anymore. That’s why my parents set me up to help her go through the house, clear things out. She talks about this jacket that she says her husband must have left somewhere, some days she says he hid it. But I’ve been through that house several times over, and no matter what I find, it’s never the right one.” He paused. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she’s never completely here anymore.”