"April 28, to be exact."

April 28. A full month before she left.

"And then?"

"And then? She said it was lost," explained Finney. "And they issued her a new one."

"Why would she do that? Report it lost?"

"Maybe because she lost it?"

"Detective, you know she hasn't lost it. I told you it was in her purse."

"You sure?"

"Am I sure? Yes! Right in her purse, in her wallet, where it always is. Next to her insurance card, her credit cards."

"Huh."

"I showed it to you."

"Sorry about that. I misremembered. I thought we couldn't find it. So many details. So why would she report it lost, then?"

"Detective, you're asking me?" Jared shook his head. "Did you check the new license? Check if there's anything on it?"

"We checked. There's nothing. She hasn't been stopped, hasn't surrendered it."

"WellaI guess you might as well check her pa.s.sport," Jared said lifelessly. "Perhaps she reported that lost also." His forehead was against the screen door. "And was issued a new one."

Evisceration Rite 4: she did. April 20. And she was.

He laid out the daggers of Larissa's vanishing on Kavanagh's table, like a prayer feast for the faithless departed.

"Is this what you call her coming back any time soon? Forty thousand dollars taken from our account? A new license. A new pa.s.sport! He is gone, she is gone. I'm asking you - does this seem to you like a person who planned to be back in a flash? Someone who's thinking it over? Someone who's left the back door ajar so she can slip in, unnoticed, like nothing was ever amiss? Why aren't you saying anything? Why?"

But the reason Kavanagh wasn't saying anything was because he wasn't in front of her. He didn't go and see her. He couldn't. All the answers were on his desk at work, where he went to hide when there was nowhere else. He didn't want to have the conversation with Kavanagh, he didn't want to see her pitying gaze, he could barely stomach Ezra's, to whom he told nothing beyond the bare bones of a hidden affair and a running-off like a dry-bank stream.

"She'll be back," said Ezra, said Maggie, said Bo and Jonny, and Tara, and Evelyn by phone from afar, all the way from Hoboken. Evelyn, sick at home with home-schooled kids, knew Larissa would be coming back. Perhaps if Evelyn had all the information: that Larissa, unlike Hansel and Gretel, left behind nothing that could be traced back to her, she would've come to a different conclusion. No one had that information but Jared. And he was growing skeletal with it.

3.

Lillypond

Eventually the children began to notice their mother remained conspicuously not home. The less said of it, the better, Jared felt, and clearly his children felt the same way, for they said less and less of it.

Michelangelo asked at first.

One night Jared overheard Emily in his bedroom saying to him, "Don't keep bringing up Mommy all the time."

"I don't bring her up all the time. I bring her up a little bit."

"Well, don't. Dad is waiting for her to come back and he gets upset."

"Why does he get upset?"

Emily was stumped for a second. Jared stood in the hall. "Why? Because he wants her to come back, and she's not back yet and this upsets him."

"I want her to come back, too."

"We all do."

"I miss her."

"Yeah."

"Is Asher going to have a graduation party?"

"I don't think so. Don't bring it up."

"But he wants a party."

"No, he doesn't. Haven't you noticed? Ash is so sad. We have to try to cheer him up."

"Like with a party?"

"Stop that. This isn't a good time for parties."

"Are we still gonna go to Lillypond when school ends?"

"I think so. Dad said."

"Yeah."

And that was the end of that.

School ended.

When school ended, Jared had no plan for Michelangelo, and he behaved like a man whose life didn't stop on the railroad tracks on a Friday in late May, a man who was without a babysitter, a man who didn't have cleaning help. He behaved like a man whose wife was still home. Like a man who still had Maggie come in the afternoons, though Maggie hadn't been able to help him much in the last few weeks, and he wished he could remember why, but he was so absorbed in the labor of his own suffering that when she began saying she couldn't come, he stopped listening. He suspected it had something to do with the exacerbation of her renal condition. Over a week ago someone had mentioned "transplant." But again, when Jared heard it, in front of "transplant" he put the word heart not the word kidney. He wasn't thinking of Maggie.

So on the first Monday of summer vacation, he showered and shaved and dressed and came downstairs to find Emily watching TV with Michelangelo. "I'll see you later, guys," he called out to them, taking his briefcase. "Be good. Call if you need anything."

"Dad!" Emily shot up from the couch, still in her pajamas. "Where are you going?"

"Where am I going? To work, Em."

"Why are you going to work?"

"Because if I don't go to work, we can't pay our rent, or buy food, and the TV will get turned off and you won't be able to watch Sponge Bob."

"But who's going to take care of us?"

"Em, you're fifteen. You're not a kid anymore. You can take care of yourself."

"But Michelangelo is not fifteen! He can't take care of himself."

"He's got his sister and brother with him."

"Dad! That's not fair! Asher and I are going to the Swim Club."

"No, I'm going to band practice," said Asher, who'd just woken up and come downstairs. "Can someone drive me? I can't carry my amp on the back of the bike."

Jared stood in the hall, having almost been out the door, and looked at his three children, the sleepy head of a neutral, everything-inside Asher, the wild-eyed expression of everything-outside Emily, and Michelangelo, in Sponge Bob oblivion. Jared had been walking out of his house his entire adult life, every morning, Monday through Friday, in Hoboken when he was a teacher, and here in Summit when he was a chief financial officer. For twenty years, he walked out his door, got into his car, and drove to work, and never once had it occurred to him to think of how the children were going to be taken care of.

Because they always were.

"Emily," he said quietly.

"Don't say my name in that way!" she cried. "Don't make me feel like I'm being unreasonable!"

"Em," he said, gripping his briefcase tighter, the knot in his tie constricting his throat, keeping him from breathing. "You have to help me out. I know it's tougha" he paused. Paused or stopped? Loosening his tie, he thought only of himself, of the emptiness, of the wish for hunger. Everything was once so good. The kids were growing up beautifully. Things were becoming easier. They lived well. Saved money. Spent money. After the kids headed to college, Jared and Larissa planned on traveling. She had already started saving the brochures for their unrealized dreams. They read books, newspapers, talked about life present and past. Everything seemed just as it should be. "I'll pay you for babysitting," Jared said to Emily, "until I figure something else out. Justalook, take the boy with you. Take him to the Swim Club."

"I'm not taking him to the Swim Club!"

Jared turned to Asher.

"I'm not taking him to band practice!"

"Why don't you take him to work, Dad? Take him with you."

The straps of the briefcase in the hand felt as if they swelled in his hinged and frantic fingers.

"I will figure something out," he repeated slowly. "But for now, the two of you, stop this nonsense and help out your dad, will you?"

Emily and Asher grimly relented and Jared left for work. But he had not thought things through.

The thing he was in the middle of, the current nightmare, it wasn't even his nightmare! It was real in someone else's life. It wasn't real. Wasn't real.

He called Larissa's mother. "Barbara, I'm sorry, but I need your help," he said, defeated.

"Thank G.o.d," she said immediately. "You want me to come and stay with the kids?"

"G.o.d, yes, please. I'll hire someone. I'm justa" Not ready. He didn't want to tell her this.

"I'll come. I'll finish up here and jump in the car."

"Oh, anda" He didn't quite know how to say it. "Barbara, can you bring some clothes with you? I'd hate for you to drive back and forth to Piermont. We have a guest room. Stay with us for a few days."

There was silence on the phone. "Truly, the world is being turned upside down," said Barbara.

Jared called Ernestina and rehired her. She gave him Thursday afternoons.

Afterward Jared sat at a corporate meeting about the new challenge of acquiring clients in an Internet world, and didn't hear a word, thankful only that he wasn't chairing it.

Barbara brought a suitcase. The children, who never had their grandmother stay with them at the house, were overjoyed. And she seemed strangely pleased also, almost as if she had planned it. Only Jared stood incongruously near his back door, feeling simultaneously grateful and revolted.

The days lumbered by, but then a week later he forgot to make the call at the end of trading to reinvest in a multibillion-dollar account for a multi-billion-dollar subsidiary fund. By the time he remembered, it was too late, the Dow had closed and the price rose over what he was allowed to pay. The weekend came and went, and on Monday, Larry Fredoso met with him darkly in the large conference room and asked him to explain, and Jared had no answers. He was counting on Larry's goodwill, wondering, but only superficially, how long the goodwill would last. If he lost his job because of incompetence, what would they all do then?

Out of options, Jared told Larry the truth. Jared didn't tell him the whole truth, nasty, devastating, cruela"the kid was twenty! And she planned to run with him for a year. But he told him almost everything else. Things he couldn't tell Ezra and Finney, he told his boss. Fredoso listened and said only, "Holy f.u.c.k," and nothing else for a few minutes, and then added, "Holy f.u.c.k," another three or four dozen times and then fell quiet. After five minutes, Jared got up and left.

An hour later Fredoso came into Jared's office and closed the door. "I am useless in personal situations," he said, "my third wife has been calling me an a.s.shole for seven years. What I meant to say before but clearly didn't was, whatever you need, you do. I'll help you. We can help. What can we do? Do you want to move closer to work? We'll find you a house in Newark, a nice one."

"I would, Larry, but no. I can't move. The kids willa" The kids. Yes, them.

"You need help. Who's taking care of them when you're here?"

"That's one of my problems. Right now my mother-in-law. But as you can imagine, that's temporary. She is seventy-eight besides."

"Ah. You should hire a professional. Hire the best. Get a live-in."

Jared said nothing. Like a live-in wife? he wanted to ask.

"What do you want? You're not saying anything. Do you want to take a leave of absence?"

"Yes," Jared said instantly.

Fredoso was taken aback. "Really?"

"I do, Larry. I know it's crazy. But I gotta figure out my kids. It's summertime. They're freaking out. I have to keep my family sane somehow. Ia"" And myself, too. I have to keep it together somehow, for my kids.

"Okay. Absolutely. Whatever you need. What, like family leave?"

"Family leave, bereavement leave. Whatever. I've got time built up. I can take some time paid. Then unpaid."

"No, we'll work it out."