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approached the other window, her sneakers making the old porch boards squeak. It was screened, curtained and latched, like the first. She jiggled the frame of the screen, anyway, and saw that to remove it from the outside she would have to bend the frame.
    Sighing, she turned toward the yard again, where the pair of dogs waited and her shiny, new van looked out of place among the derelict equipment Joe kept there.
    Everything was locked up. No one answered her calls. She supposed there wasn’t much else to do here.
    But then she thought about the back entrance; maybe it would be unlocked. So she followed the porch around, jarring screens and checking for latches as she went, and finally trying the back door to find it securely bolted against her, too.
    She was stymied. Short of breaking in, what more could she do? She descended the steps at the back of the house and walked around through the weeds to her van.
    The dogs whined. She said, “Okay. Come.” They wiggled over, like a pair of huge puppies, and gratefully received a few pats and strokes and gentle words.
    From where she stood, she could see nothing of what went on behind the windows on either side of the front door. The shadows of the porch completely obscured them from her view. Still, she felt that Joe was watching her, that he was in there, though he wouldn’t come to the door—just as he hadn’t answered any of the number of messages she’d left on his answering machine in the past few days.
    The dogs looked sleek and well fed. Someone was taking care of them. Who else could it be but Joe?
    “ Sit,” she told the dogs again. They didn’t even hesitate this time, but dropped to their haunches in the dirt at her feet.
    She turned and opened the driver’s door of her van, then felt under the seat for the heavy-duty flashlight. When she had it in her hand, she went to the back of the van, where she kept a little toolbox and a pair of work gloves. She pulled on the gloves, told the dogs once more to stay, and approached the steps to the porch again.
    She melted into the shadows by the door, walked right up to the window on the left, and pried the screen out enough to bend it and then wrench it free of the sash. She lifted the flashlight—and shattered the glass of the bottom pane, grimacing a little at the way the splintering glass cut through the ghostly silence, which seemed to lie like a stifling blanket over the neglected house.
    She took a few moments to carefully break off the shards that remained in the frame, so she wouldn’t injure herself climbing in. Then, when no sharp fragments were left to cut her, she laid her gloves on the porch, lifted her leg over the sill and went in, shoving the dusty, dark curtain out of her way.
    “ Come on in, Claire. Don’t let my dogs—or a locked door—stop you.”
    At the sound of Joe’s taunting voice, Claire froze, straddling the window. She peered through the darkness at the room she’d half entered. But she couldn’t see a thing. It was pitch black, except for what looked like the red glow of a lighted cigarette several feet away.
    Joe helped her then, by flicking on a floor lamp. She blinked at the sudden brightness. But her eyes quickly adjusted, and she found herself staring at him.
    He was stretched out on a frayed couch not ten feet away from her, wearing a faded flannel shirt and a pair of old black jeans with busted-out knees. The shirt was unbuttoned, and the lamplight gleamed on the washboard-hardness of his bare belly. She couldn’t see his eyes; he’d shielded them from the glare of the lamp with the back of the hand that held the cigarette. But she didn’t need to see them. She knew he was studying her as she hovered, half in, half out, of his living room. She watched, not sure what to do next, as the smoke from his cigarette trailed lazily up toward the watermarked ceiling.
    Feeling ridiculous, but too far down this particular road to turn back, she swung her other leg over the sill and