"What do you know? You're only seven."

Emily sighed. "He told us he was okay, in the kitchen, when Mommy thought he was hurt."

"He was covered with blood," Charlotte fretted.

"He said it wasn't his."

"I don't remember that."

"I do," Emily said emphatically.

"If Daddy wasn't shot, then who was?"

"Maybe a burglar," Emily said.

"We're not rich, Em. What would a burglar want in our place?

Hey, maybe Daddy had to shoot Mrs. Sanchez."

"Why shoot Mrs. Sanchez? She's just the cleaning lady."

"Maybe she went berserk," Charlotte said, and the possibility appealed enormously to her thirst for drama.

Emily shook her head. "Not Mrs. Sanchez. She's nice."

"Nice people go berserk."

"Do not."

"Do too."

Emily folded her arms on her chest. "Name one."

"Mrs. Sanchez," Charlotte said.

"Besides Mrs. Sanchez."

"Jack Nicholson."

"Who's he?"

"You know, the actor. In Batman he was the Joker, and he was totally massively berserk."

"So maybe he's always totally massively berserk."

"No, sometimes he's nice, like in that movie with Shirley Mac Line, he was an astronaut, and Shirley's daughter got real sick and they found out she had cancer, she died, and Jack was just so sweet and nice."

"Besides, this isn't Mrs. Sanchez's day," Emily said.

"What?"

"She only comes on Thursdays."

"Really, Em, if she went berserk, she wouldn't know what day it was,"

Charlotte countered, pleased with her response, which made such perfect sense. "Maybe she's loose from a looney-tune asylum, goes around getting housekeeping jobs, then sometimes when she's berserk she kills the family, roasts them, and eats them for dinner."

"You're weird," Emily said.

"No, listen," Charlotte insisted in an urgent whisper, "like Hannibal Lecter."

"Hannibal the Cannibal!" Emily gasped.

Neither of them had been allowed to see the movie which Emily insisted on calling The Sirens of the Lambs-because Mom and Daddy didn't think they were old enough, but they'd heard about it from other kids in school who'd seen it on video a billion times.

Charlotte could tell that Emily was no longer so sure about Mrs.

Sanchez. After all, Hannibal the Cannibal had been a doctor who went humongously berserk and bit off people's noses and stuff, so the idea of a berserk cannibal cleaning lady suddenly made a lot of sense.

Mr. Delorio came into the family room to part the drapes over the sliding glass doors and study the backyard, which was pretty much revealed by the patio lights. In his right hand he held a gun. He had not been carrying a gun before.

Letting the drapes fall back into place, turning away from the glass doors, he smiled at Charlotte and Emily. "You kids okay?"

"Yes, sir," Charlotte said. "This is a great show."

"You need anything?"

"No thanks, sir," Emily said. "We just want to watch the show."

"It's a great show," Charlotte repeated.

As Mr. Delorio left the room, both Charlotte and Emily turned to watch him until he was out of sight.

"Why's he have a gun?" Emily wondered.

"Protecting us. And you know what that means? Mrs. Sanchez must still be alive and on the loose, looking for someone to eat."

"But what if Mr. Delorio goes berserk next? He's got a gun, we could never get away from him."

"Be serious," Charlotte said, but then she realized a physical education teacher was just as likely to go berserk as any cleaning lady.

"Listen, Em, you know what to do if he goes berserk?"

"Call nine-one-one."

"You won't have time for that, silly. So what you'll have to do is, you'll have to kick him in the nuts."

Emily frowned. "Huh?"

"Don't you remember the movie Saturday?" Charlotte asked.

Mom had been upset enough about the movie to complain to the theater manager. She'd wanted to know how the picture could have received a PG rating with the language and violence in it, and the manager had said it was PG-13, which was very different.

One of the things that bothered Mom was a scene where the good guy got away from the bad guy by kicking him hard between the legs. Later, when someone asked the good guy what the bad guy wanted, the good guy said, "I don't know what he wanted, but what he needed was a good kick in the nuts."

Charlotte had sensed, at once, that the line annoyed her mother.

Later, she could have asked for an explanation, and her mother would have given her one. Mom and Daddy believed in answering all of a child's questions honestly. But sometimes, it was more exciting to try to learn the answer on her own, because then it was something she knew that they didn't know she knew.

At home, she'd checked the dictionary to see if there was any definition of "nuts" that would explain what the good guy had done to the bad guy and also explain why her mother was so unhappy about it.

When she saw that one meaning of the word was obscene slang for "testicles," she checked that mysterious word in the same dictionary, learned what she could, then sneaked into Daddy's office and used his medical encyclopedia to discover more. It was pretty bizarre stuff.

But she understood it. Sort of. Maybe more than she wanted to understand. She had explained it as best she could to Em.

But Em didn't believe a word of it and, evidently, promptly forgot about it.

"Just like in the movie Saturday," Charlotte reminded her. "If things get real bad and he goes berserk, kick him between the legs."

"Oh, yeah," Em said dubiously, "kick him in his tickles."

"Testicles."

"It was tickles."

"It was testicles," Charlotte insisted firmly.

Emily shrugged. "Whatever."

Mrs. Delorio walked into the family room, drying her hands on a yellow kitchen towel. She was wearing an apron over her skirt and blouse.

She smelled of onions, which she had been chopping, she'd been starting to prepare dinner when they'd arrived. "Are you girls ready for more Pepsi?"

"No, ma'am," Charlotte said, "we're fine, thank you. Enjoying the show.

"It's a great show," Emily said.

"One of our favorites," Charlotte said.

Emily said, "It's about a boy with tickles and everyone keeps kicking them."

Charlotte almost thumped the little twerp on the head.

Frowning with confusion, Mrs. Delorio glanced back and forth from the television screen to Emily. "Tickles?"

"Pickles," Charlotte said, making a lame effort at covering.

The doorbell rang before Em could do more damage.

Mrs. Delorio said, "I'll bet that's your folks," and hurried out of the family room.

"Peabrain," Charlotte said to her sister.

Emily looked smug. "You're just mad because I showed it was all a lie.

She never heard of boys having tickles."

"Sheesh!"

"So there," Emily said.

"Twerp."

"Snerp."

"That's not even a word."

"It is if I want it to be."

The doorbell rang and rang as if someone was leaning on it.

Vic peered through the fish-eye lens at the man on the front stoop.

It was Marty Stillwater.

He opened the door, stepping back so his neighbor could enter.

"My God, Marty, it looked like a police convention over there. What was that all about?"

Marty stared at him intensely for a moment, especially at the gun in his right hand, then seemed to make some decision and blinked.

Wet from the rain, his skin looked glazed and as unnaturally white as the face of a porcelain figurine. He seemed shrunken, shriveled, like a man recovering from a serious illness.

"Are you all right, is Paige all right?" Kathy asked, entering the hall behind Vic.

Hesitantly, Marty stepped across the threshold and stopped just inside the foyer, not entering quite far enough to allow Vic to close the door.

"What," Vic asked, "you're worried about dripping on the floor?

You know Kathy thinks I'm a hopeless mess, she's had everything in the house Scotchgarded! Come in, come in."

Without entering farther, Marty looked past Vic into the living room, then up toward the head of the stairs. He was wearing a black raincoat buttoned to the neck, and it was too large for him, which was part of the reason he seemed shrunken.

Just when Vic thought the man was stricken mute, Marty said, "Where're the kids?"

"They're okay," Vic assured him, "they're safe."

"I need them," Marty said. His voice was no longer raspy, as it had been earlier, but wooden. "I need them."