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staff in the ditch was still. The speculative buzz on the street ceased. Even the sprinklers stopped their metronomic splatting. Maybe the quiet was in my head. Maybe I was going to pass out.
    “Mrs. Schulz?” inquired the tall female officer, who had said her name was Sergeant Beiner. She leaned in close. “Are you all right?”
    “Yes,” I whispered. “I need … need to go get my son.”
    “Very soon,” she replied, as she straightened. Sergeant Beiner was fiftyish. Her six-foot height was somewhat mitigated by a humpback, and her narrow face was actually topped with a rooster-style burst of blond and gray curls. “We’re making an exception so you can go in just a few minutes. You
should
be coming down to the department,” she added, with a wary glance at John Richard. Then her tone turned sympathetic. “But since you have to go pick up your child, Mrs. Schulz, we’ll just ask a few questions now. We know where we can reach you if we need to talk to you some more later. Okay?”
    I nodded. “Later,” I said dully, “I’ll be at home.”
    The sergeant gently led me off the porch, out of earshot of John Richard and Tom. She motioned for the uniformed policeman to stand by her side as she ticked off her questions: How did you get here? What exactly did you see? What did you do? Did you see anybody driving away? Did you see anybody in the area?
    While she made notes, I told her everything: I arrived in Tom’s sedan between six-thirty and seven, I saw a body in the ditch; I called 911 and Tom. Noone drove away. No one showed up except Dr. John Richard Korman, clutching a bouquet. It was a painful recitation. Sergeant Beiner said she or one of the primary investigators would be by to see me later in the day. I walked unsteadily back to the porch.
    “I’m leaving,” I told Tom. He stepped off the porch and gave me a wordless hug. I murmured, “I’ll be okay” into his chest. Then I pulled away.
    Behind me, the grating noises of a stretcher being wheeled across the pavement disturbed the quiet of the neighborhood. Another meow directed my attention to the porch steps. A small calico ball of fur dashed out and clawed at the upended geraniums. It was Suz’s cat, Tippy. I snagged the small feline and was rewarded with a scratch on the arm. Tippy, shivering and terrified, then scrambled up my arm. When I tried to coax her down, she dug her claws in and remained poised on my shoulder. Her little body trembled next to my head.
    Two more police cars wheeled up Jacobean, red and blue lights flashing. I walked to my van with Tippy the cat perched resolutely on my shoulder. I knew the cat was part of the crime scene. But she would be ignored and abandoned if I didn’t care for her. So I took her. Three more uniformed Furman County deputies crossed Suz Craig’s lawn to Tom. Two more hauled equipment toward the ditch. No one noticed me.
    The video team began to record the scene. I averted my eyes and opened the van door. The cat leaped into the back. I stared at the keys in my hand. My ring was just like Tom’s: keys to the house, keys to the sedan, keys to the van. I tried hard to remember what it was I was supposed to dowith these keys. It
could have been me.
After a moment of fumbling with the ignition, I started my van, and stepped hard on the accelerator.
It could so very easily have been me in that ditch, if I hadn’t gotten out all those years ago.
    The dozen people gathered on porches stared with avid interest as my van chugged down the street. One man shook his head at my noisy progress. His red scalp blazed in the warming sun. Along the street, the velvety lawns glowed like chartreuse carpets.
    Suz Craig took my place. But it could so very easily have been me.

Chapter 5
    T he cat howled the two miles to Hadley Court. I pulled up in front of a three-story, white-brick-and-blue-gingerbread-trimmed Victorian-style mansion that was about as far from a mountain contemporary as it was from Mars. Marla’s