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exclusive twelve-room house, he or she would have seen a man in the window, stocky, around fifty, a mustache and dark, slicked-back hair. He or she would have seen his pale skin, his tired eyes, how he stood there, completely still, staring listlessly into the dark and had then started to cry, his tears rolling slowly down his round cheeks.
    It was still night in Marcusville, Ohio. Several hours until dawn. The small, silent community was asleep.
    Everyone except him.
    Except the man who was crying with grief and hate and loss, who was standing in the window of what had once been his daughter’s room.
    Edward Finnigan had hoped that at some point it would pass. That he would be able to stop the hunt, that he would stop delving into the past, that he would be able to lie down next to his wife again, undress her, make love to her.
    Eighteen years. And it just got worse. He grieved more; he missed her more and more—he hated more.
    He shivered.
    Pulled his bathrobe tighter around his body, moved his bare feet back a step from the dark wooden floor onto the thick carpet. He lifted his gaze from the town out there, the streets where he’d grown up, the people he knew so well, turned and looked around the room.
    Her bed. Her desk. Her walls, floor, and ceiling.
    She still lived here.
    She was dead, but this room, it was still hers.

    He had shut the door. Alice woke up so easily and he wanted to be alone; here in Elizabeth’s room he could cry, hate, and yearn without upsetting anyone. Sometimes he just stood at the window and stared at nothing. Sometimes he lay on the floor, or bent down over her bed, her teddy bear and the pink pillow, just as it had been back then. Tonight he would wait by her desk, sit in the new chair that she had never used.
    He sat down.
    Pens and erasers in a pile in front of him. A diary with a lock. Three books, which he leafed through absently; she had never really got past the horsey stage. A bulletin board on the wall; a yellowing sheet down in the left-hand corner: her schedule from Valley High School, one of Marcusville’s two public high schools. They’d been clear about that, that she should go to an ordinary school. If the daughter of one of the governor’s closest advisers didn’t go to the local school, that would signal dissatisfaction, and that was what politics was all about, giving signals, giving the right signals. Above the schedule, another sheet of yellowed paper, some telephone numbers, doodles and scrawls in pencil around the edge. At the top, a message from the trainer of Marcusville Soccer Team about a series match against Otway, a reminder of a doctor’s appointment at Pike County Hospital in Waverly, confirmation of a field trip to WPAY Radio Station, 104.1 FM in Portsmouth.
    She had stopped midstep.
    She had been on her way and he had taken all that away from her.

    Edward Finnigan hated him. He had taken Elizabeth away forever, from the next day, from life, from this house.
    The door handle moved. Finnigan turned his head quickly.
    She looked at him with resignation in her eyes.
    “Not tonight as well.”
    He sighed.
    “Alice, go back to bed. I’ll come soon.”
    “You’ll sit here all night.”
    “Not this time.”
    “Always.”
    She came into the room. His wife. He should touch her, hold her. But he couldn’t anymore. It was as if everything had died eighteen years ago. After a year or so they had had sex with each other twice a day, every day, so she would get pregnant, so they would have another child. But it hadn’t worked. There was no way of knowing whether it was their shared grief or just the fact that she was older and the female body slowly becomes less fertile. Not that it mattered. They never held each other anymore.
    She sat down on the bed. He shrugged.
    “What do you want me to do? Forget?”
    “Yes. Maybe.”
    Finnigan got up abruptly from what had once been his daughter’s chair.
    “Forget? Elizabeth?”
    “The hate.”
    He cocked his