The porch light was off when Nora and Adam came home from the Halloween dinner. Adam had left it on for the trick-or-treaters still walking the street when they set out. Now the paper lantern beside their door hung dark, and the bowl they had filled with candy was empty. Nora lifted it to let Adam reach the lock. “Popular house,” she said.

Inside, the kitchen light was on. A brown grocery bag stood beside the sink. Adam stopped with his coat half off. “Did you order anything?” Nora shook her head. They had spent the evening at her sister’s house, and neither had arranged a delivery. The back door was locked. Nothing looked disturbed.

Nora opened the bag. There was milk, the bread Adam liked, and a small jar of marmalade. She lifted the jar slowly. On the drive home, she had remembered the marmalade her grandmother kept in a blue cupboard. She had told Adam she wanted to try it again. She had not thought about it in years before that conversation.

Under the bread lay a box of birthday candles. Green ones. Adam had suggested those at the final traffic light, teasing her about turning forty next month. He looked from the candles to the jar in her hand. “We’re going outside,” he said. Nora set it down. They took their phones and left without touching anything else.

Their neighbor was pulling a plastic spider off his hedge. Adam asked whether he had seen anyone at their house. “Only you,” Mr. Bell said. “You brought shopping in about eight.” Nora looked at her husband. At eight, they had been sitting across from each other at her sister’s table. Mr. Bell smiled uncertainly. “You waved. Both of you.”

Nora called her sister while Adam called for help. Beth answered with a laugh. “Did you forget something else?” Nora asked what she meant. “You called ten minutes ago. About the cake.” Nora stood beneath the streetlamp, watching a dry leaf scrape along the curb. Beth said Nora had asked her to cancel the birthday dinner. There was no point making a fuss anymore.

“That wasn’t me,” Nora said. She heard Beth stop moving. “Nora, I know your voice.” Adam came back to her side and held out his hand. Nora took it. She told Beth they were outside their house together, and that someone might have been inside. Beth said she would come get them. Neither mentioned the marmalade.

They waited in the open beside Mr. Bell’s hedge. Adam kept explaining the evening in the same careful order, as though getting it exactly right would make it ordinary. Dinner. The drive. The dark porch. Nora watched their kitchen window. A curtain she had left tied back now covered the glass.

The responding officer checked the house with them waiting outside. There was no sign of forced entry and no one inside. He asked who else had a key. Beth arrived as Adam answered. She had their spare, and she showed it to him. The officer took their account seriously, noted the bag, and advised them to stay elsewhere while they checked their locks and accounts.

Beth opened the back doors of her car. “Come on. You can have the guest room.” Nora felt her shoulders loosen at the sight of the folded blanket on the seat. Her sister always carried one. It was such a small, familiar thing that Nora nearly cried.

Then Beth’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen and looked at Nora. Nora held up her own phone. Its screen was dark. Beth let the call ring out. A message appeared a moment later. She read it without speaking, then turned the screen toward them. We’re home now. Those people outside aren’t us. Please don’t let them in your car.

Adam stepped closer to Nora. “Look at me, Beth. We were at your table tonight.” Beth looked at his face, then at Nora’s. She opened her mouth, but another message arrived. This one held a photograph.

It showed Nora and Adam sitting at their kitchen table. Nora wore the sweater she had on now. Adam’s coat hung over the chair. Between them stood the open marmalade jar. Both were smiling at the camera.

Behind Beth, their porch light came on.

Nora felt Adam’s hand tighten around hers. Through the kitchen window, two figures moved into view. One lifted a hand in a small, patient wave. Beth backed toward her car, staring between the window and the couple beside her. Nora caught her sister’s sleeve. “Don’t leave us here.”

Adam reached for a memory that would settle it. “Tell her where we met,” he said. Nora turned to him. She could picture rain on a window and his coat over the back of a chair. There had been a place, a whole afternoon they used to talk about. Now she could not find its name. Adam tried to finish the sentence for her. Nothing came.

Inside the house, the woman pulled the kitchen curtain closed. Nora looked down at the sleeve in her fingers. She knew the woman beside the car was her sister. She remembered wanting to call her before anyone else. But her name was gone. “Please,” Nora said, and could not say anything after it.

Beth eased her sleeve free. The fear in her face softened into uncertainty. “Are you waiting for someone?” she asked. Adam lifted his free hand. In the streetlamp’s light, the pale line of an old scar across his thumb was disappearing. He remembered how he had got it until he looked again. Then it was only a hand.

The front door opened. The couple from the photograph stood beneath the porch light. “Beth,” the woman called. “Come inside. You must be freezing.” Beth glanced toward the curb, as though she had misplaced something there. Then she shut her car door and walked up the path.

Nora wanted to call after her. She could not remember why. Someone stood beside her, holding her hand. She turned toward him and waited for the face that should have come with him. He was waiting too.

For a moment, there was still the warmth of another palm. Neither knew whose.

Then even that was gone.

At the house, Beth paused on the doorstep and looked back. A dry leaf scraped along the empty curb. “Coming?” her sister asked. Beth smiled, stepped inside, and closed the door.

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