Through the crack under the door came the smell of something again, the same something that contained a hint of a suggestion of the aroma of a package of candy, rustling paper streaked with chocolate.

Matti opened his eyes at once, listening to a memory narrated in Margie’s voice, which reached him from beyond many distances, beyond the years even, many more years than he had known her. It was the voice she had always had, even before him: “Every afternoon, Nadia buys a piece of candy for Natalie. Every day, since she disappeared. Every day a different kind of candy. In the afternoon she buys the candy at the corner store and waits till evening and then till night. Only at night, when Natalie still hasn’t come back, Nadia hides the candy in the linen box under her bed. There are dozens of candies in that box. Sometimes hundreds. Nadia arranges them by type, in neat piles. First the candy bars: Kif Kaf, Pesek Zman, Egozi. Then a pile of Red Cow chocolate bars. A pile of rum-flavored Tortit, and one of Mekupelet chocolates. Pile after pile, one next to the other. Once every month or two she empties out the box, shoves the candy into trash bags and leaves them out on the street, by the trash cans. A few times she didn’t empty the candy out from the linen box for a few months and there was a horrible smell. Cockroaches. Ants. But in the last few years she’s been emptying it. Forcing herself to. And those days in between when she empties the box and when it gets filled up again are the absolute most, you could say. The absolute most. They’re not days at all, actually. They’re not nights, either. I don’t know what to call those days, I just know their color: black. But actually it’s not black, either. Not even black. They have no color. Their color is no-color.”