She said she was, and explained why. When she was in the hospital with her heart issue, when she was semiconscious and her heart was failing, she said the doctors feared she wouldn’t make it. “I thought to myself, I must live,” she said. “I had to go on.”

And when she recovered, she found herself sturdier of mind and grateful.

Also she had just met a man who she cared about. He was a retired subway conductor. “Now there’s talk of a future,” she said. “Not only is that scary but it’s totally letting go of my husband, and it’s brought emotions I didn’t expect.”

She sat down with him and shared the hold of her husband’s killing on her, how she cries on meaningful days. They spent her husband’s birthday together, March 11, and she cried the whole day.

He told her, “I’m used to women and their emotions.”

Ms. Gowins-Sowells realizes she may never have answers, no matter how many times she turns that night over in her mind. Cold cases tend to stay unchanged, like a stopped clock.

On the police procedurals on TV, she knew, miracles always happen. A revelatory clue floats from the sky and the killer is roped in. But this was life, not TV.

Her youngest son just went on break from school and was going to come to New York, and she said no, absolutely not. “I’m afraid that the same thing will happen to him that happened to my husband,” she said. “I know it’s not rational, but I’ve heard from some other survivors that they have the same feeling of being overprotective.”

She continues to visit her old house, stare at it as if it contains her answers.

She doesn’t know what will keep her from seeing things and not knowing if they are real. On a sun-warmed day not long ago, she was visiting a friend in her old neighborhood. When she left for the subway, she didn’t want to walk on her old block. She took the next street. Thirsty, she wanted a bottle of water. She thought of the La Vega Grocery on Fulton Street that she and her husband had patronized.