I WAS INVITED to her house. Or was I? Either way, I went there, out of curiosity, out of instinct. I assumed her husband was away. Would she have invited me over if he was there? What would that have been like, some conversation, tea, and potato salad? Maybe I had it all wrong. Maybe this had all taken place in my mind. Maybe there had never been an invitation.

It was an old wooden house, situated at the top of a hill. Shadowy, sheathed in long planks of dark wood. Built at the turn of the last century. The interior stairwell was also shady and dusty, but cool and not unpleasant. This is where she had been living. This was her zone. She came up and down these stairs every day now, and her children trailed her, or she went running after them. Sometimes her husband’s heavy, plodding strides could be heard in the creak of these steps as he returned from work. I ascended them gently, lightly. Soon I was at the top.

From my perch at the top of the steps, I could hear her feet on the floor. She had a soft and deliberate way of walking. She never hurried anywhere. Hers was the unhurried motherly life. They swept one way across the floor, then she returned from what she was doing. Was she waiting? I could see her in the summer light. She would stand in her kitchen looking at me.

Around their door were piles of toys and children’s clothing. Colorful rubber boots, raincoats dangling from hooks and nails. But were the children at home too? From somewhere in the house, I heard the sound of a little boy. He was talking to his mother or calling for her. Was it the same boy or someone else’s son. I crouched there in the darkness. I breathed quietly. I wasn’t sure about any of it. But hadn’t I been invited? Maybe she was waiting for me to knock.

From somewhere in the house, I heard the boom of a man’s low voice. Was it his? This I also couldn’t say. I didn’t want to find out. I fled down the stairs. Outside it was summer, that tired, drawn-out heat that sneaks in by mid-July. Some laborers were at work at a neighboring villa. They were keeping the grounds and watched as I ran along the crest of a fieldstone wall. They saw me leap. They saw me run off down the street, hail a passing car, get in, and drive away.

SHE WAS MURDERED in the night. At what time, I cannot say. If Hercule Poirot were called on, I am sure he would deduce that it was somewhere between 3 AM and 4 AM, and all while munching on an apple and leaning against a desk in the study. This was not that kind of story.

It was Klaudia who called me up and showed me the victim. She was dark-haired, with Mediterranean features, although I was told she was purely Estonian. Maybe one of those creamy-colored Saaremaa islanders, the ones with the shipwrecked Portuguese forefathers. I didn’t know how they killed her but she looked quite peaceful lying there, like an old pillow.

It was also Klaudia who told me that I had to dispose of her body. This I did, without asking any questions. It’s hard to explain how this happens, but when you are standing over a corpse in the early morning hours, you just don’t start interrogating people. I loaded her up into my car, took her out to the moor. The green muck of those bogs swallowed the girl up and she’s still there, I suppose. The world sucking on her bones. A feast for the microbiota of the moor.

When I got back to the spa hotel, Klaudia was lounging around in her bathrobe like nothing was amiss. She looked beautiful, with her flame of blonde hair. She was inspecting her pedicure. “Don’t you feel guilty at all?” I asked her. “What for?” she shrugged. “She was annoying. Ever since she took over as our manager, Miss Jänes has been on the war path. She’s never satisfied.” “You didn’t have to kill her. You could have just joined another PR agency.”

Klaudia walked over to me and pressed a fingernail against my chest. She said, “Don’t forget that you are in on it too! If we get caught, you’re also going to jail.” I felt overpowered by guilt at that moment, awash in sorrow. I knew that it was true, what she said. But I never intended to become an accessory to murder. It was just another one of those things that happened in life. A coincidence. You miss a train, you stumble on the sidewalk, you dispose of a murdered and despised PR manager in an adjacent swampland. These things do happen, you know.

I looked over at Klaudia as she fixed her pedicure, blowing on her toes to dry them. How could a woman be so beautiful and so cold-hearted and remorselessly evil? I closed my eyes then. I clenched them shut and hoped that when I reopened them, Miss Jänes would still be alive and I would still be innocent. But when I opened them, I wasn’t at the spa hotel at all. I was standing in line at a ticket booth in a Finnish bus station. It was winter and there were restless Finns in jackets queueing behind me. But where was I even going? Something –järvi? Something –koski? Somewhere, anywhere, so long as it was far away from that bitter killing.

THE HOUSE WAS located in the middle of town, built in the contemporary style that was popular in the 1970s. There were three levels, with lofts and staircases that led every which way, and there were so many doors and rooms that I didn’t notice two women and their families move in. They were somewhere in the house. I could hear them talking to each other and to their children at all hours. There were grandparents there, other visitors, next of kin. But even though they had been living in my house for days, I never saw my new neighbors.

I took care after that though. I made sure not to leave my razor by the sink, for instance, and to always put the toilet lid down just in case. The milk was put away after it was taken out and I left my shoes neatly by the door. I didn’t want to anger anyone or overstep some boundary.

Who knew what they were capable of.

Then one night I left my noisy, haunted home and went to a party. It was just a few days past midsummer, the sky was bright. There were groups of people standing in circles and drinking wine. Esmeralda was there too, listening quietly, running her silver-ringed fingers through her dark hair. She seemed to be the obelisk around which the world turned. When I saw Esmeralda there, I felt a powerful vibration, frightening and terrific in its intensity. Just this small, solemn girl standing there. She didn’t have to say a word. But for me, the sky turned blackpurple then; there was a howling wind. I didn’t even dare to speak to her and I left the party immediately.

There were a lot of people out for a stroll that night by the riverbank. They walked beside me while I sulked about Esmeralda and my invisible guests. All these women. How long could I avoid them? Maybe if I kept walking this way, Esmeralda would manifest at the end of the trail. Swim up ahead. But who should happen to cycle by but Jack Diablo, an old school chum and the recent author of a bestselling book about sports betting. Diablo was a round and happy-looking character. He spread out a blanket on the ground that was printed to look like a chessboard. “Let’s check the odds,” he said, “see what we can see.” Jack Diablo looked up at me as he arrayed the pieces across the board. He smiled. But the wind was too strong and the pieces would not stand upright. Jack frowned. He said, “We’ll have to try some other time.”

At home, I could still hear the voices of my new neighbors. Somewhere two floors down, a little boy was whispering, “Mama.” It was early morning now, the dark storm having long since blown through. I curled up beneath the window as the gray light streamed through and stared up at the ceiling. This house, this house, this house, I thought. Will it ever go back to sleep?

I HAD A SON whose name was Frank. My mother did not approve of this name. “Why did you name him after my brother?” she asked. But her brother, who was also called Frank, did approve. “Good choice,” he said with a supportive wink. Frank looked nothing like me. He had blonde hair and was dressed in overalls. His features were so rounded and button-like that he resembled a doll. Like all boys, he got into trouble. When I brought him to the gym, he created a toboggan from the barbells and went sliding across the room. Such is the nature of sons.

The saddest thing about Frank is that I didn’t want him. I remember that long drive into the mountains. His mother was in the front seat. She was wearing a yellow dress and her legs were up on the dashboard. Her belly was already showing. The driver kept driving. I had no idea where we were headed. “But I don’t want to be with you,” I told Frank’s mother. “I didn’t want any of this.” “It’s too late for that now,” she said while reading Pere ja Kodu magazine. “You’re stuck with me whether you like it or not. “Please,” I said. She said, “It’s too late for that now.”

Through the windows I could see sheets of pines and stunning ravines. Frank’s mother told the driver to pull over. She got out of the car, opened my car door, and slapped me once across the face. Then she returned to the front seat, and we continued our journey. “It’s too late for that now,” she repeated to me. I just waited until we got to the next rest stop. Then I escaped into the fresh air of the mountains. It was years before they found me, by which time Frank had grown into a restless and busy boy. Frank was a good lad. None of it was his fault, you know.