The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian

when one was nearing forty—that she was planning to bring back to her office. She would eat at her desk and work.
    “Are you Emily Linton?”
    She turned and saw before her an attractive woman somewhere around fifty. The stranger had ash blond hair that was cut short and a lovely, aquiline nose. She was wearing a down overcoat that fell to mid-shin and leather boots stained white from salt on the sidewalk.
    “I am,” she said.
    “I’m Becky Davis,” the woman said, pulling off a leather glove and extending her hand to Emily. She smiled, but Emily could sense that she was a little wary. “Do you have a second?”
    Emily glanced at the rectangular cutout in the wall behind the counter and peered into the chaos in the kitchen and the plates lined up on the brushed metal sill. It didn’t look like her grilled cheese was up. “Sure,” she said.
    Becky studied the patrons in the diner—mostly senior citizens and mostly men in green John Deere ball caps—and seemed to be considering where they should talk. Then she spied an empty booth not far from where they were standing and motioned toward it.
    “I really can’t stay,” Emily said. “I was planning to bring my sandwich back to my office and work through lunch.”
    “Oh, I have work to do, too,” Becky told her, and she slid onto the red leather cushion. Reluctantly Emily sat across from her. She couldn’t decide whether she was about to get an earful now about her husband the pilot or whether this woman was about to try to invite her to visit a church or join a women’s group of some sort. Becky seemed normal enough, but the way her eyes had darted around before deciding they should sit suggested that looks in this case might be deceiving; perhaps she was one of the town crazies. She seemed a little flushed—the cold, perhaps—but she was fidgeting nervously with the zipper on her coat and her unease was palpable.
    “You’re Hallie and Garnet’s mother, right?” Becky asked. “You just moved here from Pennsylvania.”
    “That’s right,” Emily admitted, understanding this would not be about Flight 1611. It was, she decided, instead going to be about joining the elementary school’s parent-teacher organization. Maybe they needed her to bake cupcakes for something. In West Chester, it seemed she was always baking cupcakes for something. Still, she smiled and raised her eyebrows. “You’ll have to tell me why you’ve done so much homework.”
    “Oh, everyone knows. Bethel is a small town. I live in the brick house with the white shutters about two miles from you. I imagine you pass it every day on the way in to Littleton. Still, our paths weren’t going to cross unless I introduced myself to you, because my boys are well beyond the elementary school. One is in high school and one is in college.”
    “Where do you work?” Emily asked.
    “I work at Lyndon State. It’s a long commute, I know.”
    “Not by Philly standards.”
    “I guess. And obviously I’m not there today. My parents are coming north from Asheville for the week and I took the day off to get the house ready. That’s my work this afternoon.” Now the woman was glancing behind her and peering out the large glass windows of the diner.
    “You expect to see them on the sidewalk?” Emily asked. She couldn’t resist.
    “What?”
    “Your parents. You were looking around just now like you expected to see them wandering up Main Street.”
    “No. Look, I’m taking a chance talking to you. Reseda Hill sold you your house and you work in John Hardin’s law firm. So, obviously, it’s crossed my mind that you might be …” She paused, the half sentence lingering awkwardly amidst the clattering dishes and burble of conversation in the diner.
    “I might be what?”
    “There’s no graceful way to say it: You might be one of them.”
    “One of them? One of who?”
    “But there’s obviously a lot about you on the Web—because of your husband,” she went on, ignoring