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she said, but so what if he missed a day of school? So what if he lounged around the house? What if they all abandoned their duties and did what they wanted today—watched TV, ate sugary cereal, read comic books? Ethan would ride his unicycle around the driveway. Janine would practice viola. Lovell would set up his computer and maps all over the kitchen table. Or he would putter around the house or up on the roof, tending to the solar panels. And Hannah? If she could do anything she wanted today, anything at all? She didn’t know. She had no idea.
    On the counter was a folder of old photos her mother had given her yesterday, pictures of Hannah as a child that had not made it into an album. She opened the folder and flipped through them. There was her first-grade picture, another of her steering her father’s boat. She stopped at a shot of her sitting in her father’s office chair behind his big mahogany desk, her hair in yellow plastic barrettes with little chicks. She didn’t remember this one. She did remember the few times that she went to that office overlooking the ferry dock, Mrs. Corcoran, the pudgy, kindly secretary who let Hannah try on her red bifocals, the other men flashing by, oblivious, leaving only the whiff of cigarettes. And the objects of the place: her father’s glass paperweight with the tiny sailboat inside; his envelope opener, that bronze dagger; the supply closet, the wondrous supply closet that held boxes of shiny clips and erasers and highlighters that Mrs. Corcoran allowed her to play with in the waiting area. A five- or six-year-old Hannah smiled back at her with all the hope and imagination in the world. It took her breath away. Hannah slipped the folder into her purse. She did not want to see that picture for a while.
    Ethan was before her, his jacket zipped to his chin, his backpack hanging from his shoulders.
    â€œGood job,” she said. “You’re all set.”
    He nodded and she gathered him in her arms. He smelled of grape toothpaste and bubble-gum shampoo, and blessedly he let her hold him for a long moment. She grabbed a granola bar for him and ushered him out the front door.

Chapter 4
    O n Sunday morning, while the kids were still asleep, Lovell went to make coffee. He took note of the sprinkle of grounds that had remained beside the coffee maker since Hannah’s disappearance four mornings ago. She preferred flavored; he, “regular leaded,” as he called it. Making her favorite coffee that morning must have done nothing for her, in the end.
    He still half expected, half hoped, that he would hear the sound of the front door opening and Hannah calling, Hello? Anyone home? Her arms full of gifts or flowers to convey a change of heart, maybe contrition, she would say that she had just needed some time and space apart from him in order to really think things over and come to the decision that she did not—of course she did not—want to leave them.
    He turned on the coffee maker and waited, hands laced around the back of his neck, for the sound of the gurgling water to fill the silence in the kitchen. Once it did, he walked outside to get the newspaper, shielding his face from the reporters, but when he looked, he saw that the TV crews had packed up their equipment and gone home. He reminded himself that there had been no news about the case for two days now. Curled leaves blew in little horizontal tornadoes down the street. The sidewalks were empty.
    He moved toward the front lawn to pick up some fallen branches from a recent storm and saw a young couple pass by on the sidewalk. They averted their eyes at first, but the woman peered back over at him. He had no idea how to behave, how to look, or what, if anything, to say when people watched him this way. Yesterday, Karen Mekenner had inched past his house in her silver Volvo, eyeing him as he took out the trash.
    Moving here from their overpriced, cramped Brookline studio had been a