Phil Parisi

They had been pulled out of the way and tossed into a corner, revealing the smooth, cold cement beneath.

The chairs, of which there turned out to be exactly thirty-six, had been arranged in a very large, precise circle that took up the entire clear area between the north and south walls of the basement.

with the same few inches of space between each chair all around, no exceptions.

They all faced toward a common center point.

My eyes were drawn quickly to what lay in the middle of that disturbingly formal circle Tess and I had heard being created.

It was a woman.

I parted the circle, nudging two chairs to create an opening, and knelt beside her.

She was lying on her side.

She wore a thick green knit cap with a white pom-pom up top and a heavy winter coat.

and beneath that a dark fleece top over a plaid lumberjack shirt.

Her pants were tan slacks, stained, frayed, too thin for cold weather.

She had boots on, cheap gloves.

Her hair, once red but almost entirely gray now, stuck out messily from beneath her cap.

Her eyes were closed.

She wasn't breathing.

It's Maeve, Tess would say later upon entering the basement again, after I called Kristen to bring her over as fast as she could.

Maeve was the homeless woman she had tried to show some measure of kindness to, once leaving gingerbread cookies and a sandwich and a thermos of coffee for her in the little encampment she'd forged for herself in the woods nearby, woods that were technically the property of a chemical company.

Now it was several weeks later, and she was dead.

Sometime in the 45 minutes after Tess and I had first fled, she'd come to that house, gone down the stairs, walked into the center of the circle, and died.

As Tess and Kristen stood there with me long after my fruitless resuscitation attempts, Tess confirmed that at some point in the blur of the last few nights, she vaguely remembered images of herself walking through the woods to Maeve's encampment and giving her the house's specific address in case she ever really needed help.