The vic’s home is your shot at getting a handle on this person you’re never going to meet. Even for their friends, people filter and spin, and then the friends filter all over again: they don’t want to speak ill of the dead, or they’re feeling maudlin about their poor lost pal, or they don’t want you to misunderstand that little quirk of his. But b

We want whatever it is that can help us draw the absent shape, we look for more information, more data points, an ever-greater accumulation of stories and remembrances. But the quest is never finished, the one who went away never returns. Slowly the bank of stories is depleted. The memories evaporate.