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have changed?” Bob asked now. “It’s been almost ten years. People grow up.”
    “Even Jim Corliss?” Lucy scoffed. “Do you know how many jobs he’s had since he left me? Seven! Seven jobs in nine years, Bob. You call that mature?”
    “But only one in the last four years, Lucy. And he’s good with Randy.”
    “Who he never wanted in the first place,” Lucy shot back, her voice bitter. “To Jim, Randy’s nothing more than a part-time hobby he can deal with over a weekend now and then. But all the time? Come on, Bob, you know damned well Jim would send him back in a week. And what would that do to Randy? He’s miserableenough already—having his father reject him could destroy him. I won’t do it.” She wondered if she should tell Bob that Jim had mentioned the possibility of going to court over Randy, and decided against it Bob—reasonable Bob—would only suggest that it might not be best for anyone to have a court fight over Randy, and that perhaps she should consider at least sharing the boy with Jim. And that, she knew, was something she wasn’t prepared to do.
    “I’m sorry,” she said as their food arrived. “I don’t know why I always wind up crying on your shoulder. Let’s talk about something else, okay? like when you and Elaine can come over for some of my famous burnt steaks? The weather’s getting nice, and I feel in the mood for a barbecue. How about this weekend?”
    And so the afternoon passed, and Lucy kept her mind off her problems. Or, more exactly, she
tried
to keep her mind off her problems. But by five o’clock, when she left the office, Randy was once more looming at the forefront of her mind.
    As she pulled into the driveway of the small house she had bought five years before, her feeling of unease increased. Usually, Randy was there, standing at the living-room window, watching for her.
    She went inside and called out to him. There was no answer. Quickly, she went through the house, but nowhere was there any sign of Randy. His room was as it had been this morning, and his school clothes, which he usually left in a heap on the floor, were nowhere to be seen. Satisfied that Randy was not in the house, Lucy went next door to talk to Margaret Willis.
    “But why didn’t you call me?” Lucy asked when the elderly widow told her that Randy had not been seen at all that afternoon.
    Mrs. Willis’s hands fluttered nervously. “Why, I simply assumed he’d gone to play with friends,” she said, then flushed a deep red as she realized her error. Even on the days when Randy didn’t come home immediately after school, he was always home long before his mother wasexpected But today, the afternoon had slipped away, and she hadn’t seen Randy.
    Margaret Willis’s ample chin began to quiver. “Oh, dear, I’ve made a terrible mistake, haven’t I? But surely you don’t think anything’s happened to him? Why, its not even five thirty yet Why don’t you let me fix you a nice cup of tea?” She tried to draw Lucy into her house, but Lucy pulled away.
    “No, no, thank you, Mrs. Willis. I’d better try to find out what’s happened to him.” Lucy tried to Keep her voice calm, but her eyes revealed the fear that was beginning to grip her. Margaret Willis reached out and touched her arm.
    “Now, what could have happened to him?” she asked gently. “It’s not as if this was Boston, dear. Why, nothing ever happens in Eastbury, you know that I’ll tell you what—I’ll make some tea and bring it over to your house.”
    Tea, Lucy thought Why is it that half the people in the world think that a nice cup of tea will fix everything? But she was too upset to argue. “All right,” she agreed. “All leave the front door open.”
    She hurried down the steps of Mrs. Willis’s front porch and cut across the lawn that separated the large Willis house from her own. Inside, the silence pushed her unreasonably close to the edge of panic. She went to the kitchen and made herself sit down