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Abernathy assured me that Hunter and Grant were in her office, that they were safe, and that they knew nothing about the incident.
    “Nevertheless, I wanted to see them myself and make certain that they were all right. Mrs. Abernathy offered to personally deliver them to me at home. I left the museum immediately to meet her there.”
    “Did you talk to anyone?”
    “I tried to reach Jeremy. I wanted to know what was going on. But my repeated calls to his cell phone went straight to voice mail. I also tried his workplace. I was told he had called in sick that morning. No one at the construction firm had seen or heard from him since the day before.”
    “You went home?”
    “That’s right.”
    *  *  *
     
    In terms of mileage, the museum wasn’t that far from her townhouse, but it seemed to take forever to cover the distance. The streets were familiar, so she could drive them without having to concentrate. But that only allowed her mind to spin wildly with chilling thoughts. Jeremy’s relationship with Willard and Darlene Strong was obviously volatile, and the possibility of it endangering her sons to any extent and on any level was untenable.
    Would she have to get a restraining order after all? Should she appeal to the family-court judge to deny Jeremy all visitation rights until he got himself sorted out? Perhaps a drastic move like that would wake him up to how self-destructive his behavior had become. Maybe withholding his sons would compel him to seek treatment, to get counseling, before he completely ruined his life.
    Such were her thoughts as she pulled onto Jones Street, which looked absurdly placid. Enormous live-oak trees cast welcome shade onto the sidewalks buckled by their roots.
    After moving out of the house where she and the boys had experienced so many unhappy times, she’d leased the townhouse. The walled courtyard provided a safe place for the boys to play. The neighbors watched out for one another. Until she decided where she wanted to settle, it was a comfortable and convenient stopgap.
    To her disappointment, Mrs. Abernathy hadn’t yet arrived. She turned in to the narrow, oyster-shell driveway and followed it along the side of the building to her parking space in back. She alighted quickly, climbed the steps, and unlocked the back door, which opened directly into the kitchen. Her alarm started beeping. It sounded unusually loud, and it took her a frustrating three tries before she punched in the correct sequence of numbers to turn it off.
    When it stopped, her ears continued to ring—the only sound she heard above the portentous silence that pressed itself against her eardrums. All her sensory receptors seemed heightened to a thousand times greater than their normal capacity. Because there was no motion or sound, the absence of stimuli was deeply disturbing. It bespoke the void her life would be without her sons in it.
    The rambunctiousness of two active preschoolers, which sometimes frazzled her, was now what she craved. She wanted to hear their laughter, inhale their little-boy smells, feel the pressure of their warm bodies against her chest and the damp smear of their kisses on her cheeks.
    She went to the sink, turned on the faucet, and took a drinking glass from the open shelf. She filled the glass with water and drained it thirstily. Thinking that surely the headmistress had had time to get there by now, she glanced at the clock on the stove, then, thinking she heard a car on the street, turned.
    When the glass slipped from her hand, it shattered on the floor, spraying her feet and legs with shards of glass.
    Willard Strong was standing not three feet from her. He held a double-barrel shotgun crosswise against his chest, from shoulder to hip, one hand on the stock, the other on the barrels. “You scream and I’ll kill you.” Her back door was standing ajar. Calmly, he reached behind him and pushed it closed.
    *  *  *
     
    Amelia rolled her lips inward and took a deep breath