At 11:29 p.m. Pacific time, in San Francisco, Nadine Van Orman, 24, was struck by a car at the intersection of 11th and Dempsey while walking home from her shift at Starling & Crumb Bakery.

The report reached us shortly after midnight from a listener whose apartment overlooks the intersection. He wrote that Nadine was wearing a brown wool coat and carrying a white bakery box tied with string. The box was later found under a parked car. Inside were four almond horns, two broken, and one pastry labeled with a name that was not hers.

Nadine was born in Tucson and raised partly in Bisbee by her grandmother, Willa Van Orman, who taught her how to hem pants, how to fry potatoes in bacon grease, and how to identify silverfish in old books. She moved to San Francisco three years ago, first to work for a cousin's catering company, then to take the bakery job, which began at four in the afternoon and ended whenever the croissants were counted, the mixer bowls were washed, and the owner stopped pretending he did not need help with the register.

She sent money every month to her grandmother, always in odd amounts. Twenty-three dollars. Forty-one dollars. Seventeen dollars and six cents. Her grandmother said the numbers were private jokes from childhood.

Nadine had recently become engaged to a man named Mateo Ruiz, a municipal electrician, though she had not yet told her father. She wanted to visit Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, because her great-grandfather had worked there for one season on a fishing boat before deserting, changing his name, and traveling south by train.

She was afraid of deep water. She liked tide pools, harbors, postcards, ferry terminals, painted boats, and maps. She did not like swimming.

After her death, police returned her coat to her father, Leon Van Orman. Inside the lining, written in black marker along the seam, were the names of places Nadine hoped to go. Some were real. Yarmouth. Trieste. Ely. Tobermory. Bar Harbor. Alesund. Marfa. Some were not clear. One appeared to be "the green room." One was only "after."

The last word, written near the left cuff, was Elsewhere.

Nadine Van Orman is survived by her father, Leon; her grandmother, Willa; two half-sisters, Maura and Kit; her fiancé, Mateo; and by a jar of coins in her kitchen labeled BOAT, though there was only thirty-six dollars and eighty cents inside.