I clicked on it.

The message was short. It read: "Dear Cynthia: As per our earlier conversation, your family really does forgive you. But they can't ever stop asking themselves: Why?"

I must have read it five times, then went back up to the subject line. It wouldn't be much longer till what?

24.

"How could someone get our e-mail address?" I asked Cynthia. She was sitting in front of the computer, staring at the screen. At one point, she reached toward the monitor, as if touching the message might somehow reveal more about it. e-mail address?" I asked Cynthia. She was sitting in front of the computer, staring at the screen. At one point, she reached toward the monitor, as if touching the message might somehow reveal more about it.

"My father," she said.

"What about your father?"

"When he got in here, when he left the hat," Cynthia said. "He could have come up here and looked around, got on the computer, figured out our e-mail address."

"Cyn," I said cautiously, "we still don't know that your father left that hat. We don't know who left that hat."

I thought back to Rolly's theory, and my own briefly held suspicion, that Cynthia could have placed the hat there herself. And for an instant, no longer, I thought about how easy it would be to set up a Hotmail address and send an e-mail to yourself.

Knock it off, I told myself.

I could sense Cynthia bristling at my comment of a moment ago, so I added, "But you're right. Whoever got in here, they could have come upstairs and nosed around, turned on the computer, gotten our e-mail address."

"So it's the same person," Cynthia said. "The person who phoned me, the one you said was just a crank, is the same person who sent this e-mail, and the same person who snuck into our house and left the hat. My father's hat."

That made sense to me. The part I was having trouble with was, who was that person? Was it the same person who'd murdered Tess? Was it the man I'd spotted through Grace's telescope the other night, watching our house?

"And he's still talking about forgiveness," Cynthia said. "That they forgive me. Why does he say that? And what does it mean, that it won't be much longer?"

I shook my head. "And the address," I said, pointing to the e-mail box on the screen. "Just a jumble of numbers."

"That's not a jumble of numbers," Cynthia said. "It's a date. May 12, 1983. The night my family disappeared."

[image]

"We're not safe," Cynthia said that night.

She was sitting up in bed, the covers pulled up to her waist. I happened to be looking out the bedroom window, taking one last peek at the street before I got under the covers with her. This was a habit I'd developed in the last week.

"We're not," she repeated. "And I know you feel the same way, but you don't want to talk about it. You're worried you're going to upset me, send me over the edge or something."

"I'm not afraid you're going to go over the edge," I said.

"But you're not willing to say we're safe," Cynthia said. "You're not safe, I'm not safe, Grace is not safe."

I knew that very well. She did not need to remind me. It was never out of my thoughts.

"My aunt has been murdered," Cynthia said. "The man I-we-hired to find out what happened to my family is missing. You and Grace saw a man watching our house a few nights ago. Someone was in our house, Terry. If not my father, then somebody. Whoever left that hat, sat at our computer."

"It wasn't your father," I said.

"Are you saying that because you really know who left it there, or are you saying that because you think my father's dead?"

I had nothing to say.

"Why do you think the DMV has no record of my father's license?" she asked. "Why's there no record of him with Social Security?"

"I don't know," I said tiredly.

"Do you think Mr. Abagnall found out something about Vince? Vince Fleming? Didn't he say he wanted to find out some more about him? Maybe that's what he was doing when he disappeared. Maybe Mr. Abagnall's okay, but he's following Vince, hasn't been able to call his wife."

"Look," I said. "It's been a long day. Let's try and get some sleep."

"Please tell me you're not keeping anything else from me," Cynthia said. "Like you did about Tess's illness. Like you did about her telling me about the payments she received."

"I'm not keeping anything from you," I said. "Didn't I just show you that e-mail? I could have just deleted it, not even told you about it. But I agree with you, we have to be careful. We've got new locks on the doors. No one's breaking in now. And I'm not going to give you a hard time about walking Grace to school."

"What do do you think's going on?" Cynthia said. There was something in the way she asked the question, something almost accusatory, that suggested to me she still suspected I was holding something back. you think's going on?" Cynthia said. There was something in the way she asked the question, something almost accusatory, that suggested to me she still suspected I was holding something back.

"Jesus Christ," I snapped. "I don't know. It wasn't my f.u.c.king family that vanished off the face of the f.u.c.king earth."

It stunned Cynthia into silence. I'd stunned myself. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. It's just, this is taking a toll on all of us."

"My problems are taking a toll on problems are taking a toll on you you," Cynthia said.

"That's not it," I said. "Maybe, look, maybe we should go away for a while. The three of us. We'll pull Grace out of school. I can w.a.n.gle a few days from Rolly, he'll cover for me, get a subst.i.tute in, they'll understand if you take some time away-"

She threw the covers off her legs and got up. "I'm going to sleep with Grace," she said. "I want to be sure she's okay. Somebody has to do something."

I said nothing as she tucked her pillows under her arm and left the room.

I had a headache and was headed for the bathroom, where I'd find some Tylenols in the medicine cabinet, when I heard running in the hall.

Before Cynthia actually appeared in the bedroom door, she was screaming, "Terry! Terry!"

"What?" I said.

"She's gone. Grace isn't in her room. She's gone!"

I followed her down the hall, back to Grace's room, flipping on lights as I went. I pa.s.sed Cynthia, went into Grace's room ahead of her.

"I looked!" Cynthia said. "She's not in here!"

"Grace!" I said, opening her closet door, glancing under her bed. The clothes she'd been wearing that day were balled up and left sitting on her desk chair. I ran back out and into the bathroom, pulled back the curtain on the bathtub, found it empty. Cynthia had gone into the room where we kept the computer. We met back in the hall.

No sign of her.

"Grace!" Cynthia shouted.

We threw on more lights as we came running down the stairs. This couldn't be happening, I told myself. This simply could not be happening.

Cynthia swung open the bas.e.m.e.nt door, shouted our daughter's name down into the darkness. No response.

As I entered the kitchen I noticed the back door, with its new deadbolt installed, was just barely ajar.

I felt my heart stop.

"Call the police," I said to Cynthia.

"Oh my G.o.d," she said.

I turned on the outside light over the door as I swung it open and ran out, in my bare feet, into the yard.

"Grace!" I shouted.

And then a voice. Annoyed. "Dad, turn off that light!"

I glanced to my right, and there was Grace, standing in the yard in her pajamas, her telescope set up on the lawn, pointed at the night sky.

"What?" she said.

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We both could, and probably should, have taken more time off work, especially after the night we'd put in, but we both returned to our jobs the following morning.

"I'm really sorry," Grace said, for about the hundredth time, as she ate her Cheerios.

"Don't you ever ever pull a stunt like that again," Cynthia said. pull a stunt like that again," Cynthia said.

"I said I'm sorry sorry."

Cynthia had still ended up sleeping with her for the night. She wasn't about to let Grace out of her sight for a while.

"You snore, you know," Grace told her.

It was the first I'd felt inclined to laugh in a while, but I managed to hold it in.

I left first for work, as usual. Cynthia did not say goodbye or walk me to the door. She still hadn't forgotten our fight before the false alarm with Grace. Just when we needed to pull together, there was this invisible wedge being driven between us. Cynthia remained suspicious that I was still keeping things from her. And I was feeling uneasy about Cynthia in ways I was finding it hard to articulate, even to myself.

Cynthia thought I was blaming her for all our current troubles. It was undeniable that her history, her proverbial baggage, was currently haunting our days and nights. And at some level, maybe I was blaming her, even though it wasn't her fault that her family had disappeared.

The one concern we had in common, of course, was how all this was affecting Grace. And the way our daughter had chosen to cope with the household angst-so troubling that thoughts of a destructive asteroid actually provided some sort of an escape-had itself become the catalyst for another blowup.

[image]

My students were amazingly well behaved. Word must have gotten around about why I'd been away the last couple of days. A death in the family. High school kids, like most natural predators, will typically seize on their prey's weakness, use it to their advantage. From all reports, they had certainly done this with the woman who'd been called in to cover my cla.s.ses. She had the tiniest trace of a stutter, usually no more than a hesitation with the first word in any given sentence, but it was noticeable enough for the kids to all start mimicking it. She'd evidently gone home the first day in tears, other staff members told me over lunch without a hint of sympathy in their voices. It was a jungle down that hallway, and you either made it or you didn't.

But they cut me some slack. Not just my creative writing group, but my two other English cla.s.ses as well. I think they were behaving not just out of respect for my feelings-in fact, that was probably a very small part of it. They didn't act out because they were watching for signs that maybe I'd behave differently, shed a tear, get impatient with someone, slam a door, anything.

But I did not. So I could expect no special considerations the next day.

Jane Scavullo hung back as my morning cla.s.s filed out of the room. "Sorry about your aunt," she said.

"Thank you," I said. "She was my wife's aunt, actually, although I felt every bit as close to her."

"Whatever," she said, and caught up with the others.

About midafternoon, I was walking down the hall near the office when one of the secretaries charged out, saw me, and stopped dead.

"I was just going to go looking for you," she said. "I paged your office, you weren't there."

"That's because I'm here," I said.

"Phone call for you," she said. "I think it's your wife."

"Okay."

"You can take it in the office."