The boy is ignoring him, so Julian elbows him, and he sits up in his seat with a little growl.

"I've never seen snow," Julian says. They pa.s.s Chuck and Karl's and the Mobile station. "Here at this telephone pole? Take a left."

As if the meanest boy in Verity could give a s.h.i.t about directions. He puts his head back and closes his eyes, but Julian steps on the brakes, hard, so that the boy shoots forward in his seat, then is snapped back by the harness of the seat belt.

"Now do I have your attention?" Julian asks.

"You make a sharp right into the driveway."

The boy slowly nods, and Julian continues toward the house, past the merlins in the cypress trees. Both dogs are barking; Loretta from inside the house, Arrow from his kennel. When they get out of the car, Arrow charges the kennel fence, but when he recognizes Julian and the boy, he stops.

Julian walks on ahead, then signals for the boy to follow him. Outside the fence there's a silver trashcan filled with kibble; the cover is weighed down with a brick to discourage racc.o.o.ns. Julian opens a small gate, about the size of a cat door, and lifts out a metal bowl.

"Fill this with eight cups," he tells the boy.

As Julian roots around for the plastic measuring cup, the boy places his hand against the wire meshing of the fence. Arrow comes to put his nose against the palm of his hand.

"Are you listening?" Julian says.

The boy obediently begins to fill the bowl, so Julian goes inside. He takes his suitcase from the closet, and throws in some socks and underwear along with a clean pair of jeans and some .38 rounds. He stops in the kitchen for a bag of Doritos and a six-pack of c.o.ke. Most people, when they take off, wind up heading for home.Julian turns off his kitchen light, then calls to Loretta and snaps on her lead. Out on the front porch, he puts down his suitcase and has Loretta sit. The whole time he's driving he'll be thinking of Lucy; he'll be covering up her fingerprints on the steering wheel with his own.

It's already dark, and Julian should get on the road, but he's held by the sight of the boy stroking Arrow's neck while the dog gobbles his dinner.

Julian knows if he stuck his hand in the feed door and tried to touch the dog while he ate, he'd be bitten. What makes Arrow so quiet tonight, almost docile? When he's finished his food, the dog lies with his head on his paws while the boy pets him.

Julian leads Loretta down to the car, opens the back door for her, and tosses his suitcase inside.

"You'd better keep your hands out of there," he calls.

The meanest boy in Verity is embarra.s.sed; quickly, he stops petting the dog and latches the feed door. He's still crouched on the ground when Julian comes up beside him.

"I have to go out of town," Julian says. "I need you to feed him."

The boy looks up at him, puzzled.

"Forget about him and he starves, so don't forget about him. He looks like he likes you, but don't start thinking you can let him out of his kennel, because you can't. He'd tear most people apart."

When the boy rises to his feet, Julian has the urge to tell him not to talk to strangers, but he keeps his mouth shut. This isn't any of Julian's business; he can't keep tabs on the boy, he won't even be in town. By morning he should be in Virginia, where he'll let himself sleep for an hour by the side of the road. Still, he knows what it's like when no one trusts you; it turns you so inside out that your shadow is the one that leads the way and all you can do is follow wherever it takes you. He knows for a fact that bad boys don't necessarily run away, even when they're given the chance. That's how they get into trouble in the first place. They don't know when to back down.

"You want a ride to Miss Giles's, or you want to walk it?" Julian says.

The boy turns his face to him and Julian can tell he doesn't believe he's heard correctly. It takes a good while for the boy to understand that he has.

After Julian gets into his car, and the key is turned in the ignition and a cloud of blue smoke spills into the black air, the boy finally allows himself to believe. It's easy to tell when the car reaches the end of the driveway; the merlins begin to call in the tops of their trees. The meanest boy in Verity listens to the sound of birds in the night. It's all right if he's out here by himself. It's all right just to look at the sky. Soon, he'll be on the road, all on his own, and as he walks beneath the stars, finding his way will be easy as pie.part six.

N Great Neck, in the month of May, you can smell lilacs and freshly cut gra.s.s and the sharp, stinging scent of chlorine as pools are cleaned and readied for the summer. On Easterbrook Lane, where the shade trees are more than a hundred years old, it's nearly impossible to see some of the houses from behind their hedges of rhododendrons, although Lucy manages to spy her front door as soon as the taxi turns the corner.

It's a white colonial with green shutters, actually quite pretty, and although it was several steps down from her Uncle Jack's house in Kings Point, Lucy is astounded to see how large it is, how well kept since her departure, almost as if her presence had made the shutters fall off their hinges and crabgra.s.s sprout up along the brick path to the door.

It's cool here in the mornings; Lucy had forgotten that. The air is blue and fresh, and you can hear dogs barking in the fenced backyards.

Lucy pays the driver and collects her suitcase and purse, but after the taxi has made a U-turn and disappeared she is still standing on the brick path. Someone has planted a new rose bed, and by June there will be huge pink roses lining the walkway. From the moment she left, Lucy erased bits and pieces of this house, until it had become no bigger than a toy she could hold in the palm of her hand. But here it still stands, rooted and st.u.r.dy with its red brick chimney. At the front door, Lucy puts her suitcase down on the white wooden bench she once mail-ordered from Smith & Hawken, then runs a hand through her hair.

She had to spend the night in Atlanta, where she curled up in a plastic chair and slept fitfully, and now the front of her hair stands straight up, as though she's had a bad scare. She has brought almost nothing with her; her suitcase is filled with tank tops and jeans.

It is possible that she may not even have brought a comb.

She knocks twice, and it's a while before the lock slides open and Evan appears at the door. She's woken him, and standing there in his blue robe, he's sleepy and confused. He's a good-looking man, tall, with the same thick, fair hair as Keith and a face so open it hides nothing, not even the fact that for a moment he doesn't recognize his ex-wife.

"Lucy," he says finally. All the color has drained from his face and he doesn't open the screen door. "What happened? Where's Keith?"

"He's fine," Lucy says. It's so much easier if you take a deep breath before you begin to lie. "He went to a friend's and didn't bother to tell me.

You know how he is," she adds when Evan looks doubtful.

"You came here to tell me that instead of phoning?" Evan says.

"Actually, I came for the reunion," Lucy says. If she didn't have this cover story, she would have to invent one; the truth would only reignite Evan's desire for custody.

Along the street, some of the automatic sprinklers have switched on;there's the sound of water spraying and the scent of rich earth.

"You're here for the reunion?" Evan says, more confused than ever.

"You didn't call me to let me know Keith was all right. I thought he'd been kidnapped. I haven't been using the phone in case a ransom call came through. I haven't left the house in case Keith appeared at the door."

"I'm sorry," Lucy says, for more than he'll ever know.

"I have a right to know these things," Evan says.

"I mean, Christ, I'm not some outsider."

Lucy swallows hard. "I agree."

"Where exactly was he all this time?"

Lucy tilts her face upward; the pulse in her throat is throbbing. If Julian Cash were here, he'd know she was lying.

"At his friend Laddy's."

"Jesus," Evan says. "All that worry. Something's seriously wrong here, Lucy. It really is."

"Why does this sound like you think it's my fault?" Lucy asks.

"Because he's unhappy."

"Well, that's nothing new, is it?" Lucy shoots back. "He's been unhappy since the day he was born, and that was before I had a chance to screw him up.

"I didn't mean that," Evan says.

"Look, do you think I could come inside?" Lucy asks.

"Maybe it's good that you're here," Evan says, still speaking to her through the screen door. "We need to talk seriously about Keith. I didn't want to hurt your feelings, but ever since winter vacation I've been getting letters from him. He's been calling me collect. He wants to come home."

Lucy stares at the man she married when she was twenty-one, when her hair was still so long it reached her waist, when she thought she had all the time in the world.

"For good," he says.

She had forgotten you could actually get a chill here early in the mornings. It's so unlike Florida, where the heat doesn't bother to wait until a decent hour to strike.

"I'd really like some coffee," Lucy says.

"Coffee?" Evan says. Here?"

It was never that difficult to win an argument with Evan; he was fartoo kindhearted to go for blood.

"I sat in Atlanta all night." But still he doesn't open the door.

"You don't want me inside," Lucy says flatly.

A woman's voice calls tentatively from the hallway. "Evan?"

Lucy is embarra.s.sed to discover that she's never once thought of or imagined Evan with another woman; she didn't feel proprietary about him even back when they were married, so she's not at all certain why she suddenly feels so uncomfortable. Evan looks completely distressed, as though he'd like one or both or all of them to disappear into a puff of smoke.

"It's okay," Lucy tells Evan through the screen door. "You're allowed."

"Look, Lucy, I think you should call before you do something like this."

The woman appears behind Evan; she's dressed but still sleepy. Her hair hasn't been brushed yet.

"Evan?" she says when she sees Lucy out on the front porch.

The woman has long dark hair, and Lucy can tell, right away, that she's younger, possibly by as much as ten years.

"You remember my wife," Evan says to the woman. He turns back to Lucy, fl.u.s.tered. "Melissa Garber," he reminds her. "Kindergarten."

Lucy sees that the dark-haired woman was indeed Keith's kindergarten teacher. They'd had endless conferences about Keith's misbehavior, even back then. Melissa came up with the idea of making him the permanent hamster monitor, to build his self-esteem and sense of responsibility, but it hadn't worked. He'd continued destroying the library corner and stealing pocketfuls of Legos, and Lucy had had the d.a.m.ned hamsters to care for over every school vacation.

"Right," Lucy says. "Melissa. Miss Garber, right?" she says to Evan.

What Lucy can't help wondering, as Evan finally opens the door and leads her into the kitchen and Melissa excuses herself, is how long this has been going on, whether it was already starting all those years back, during their parent-teacher conferences. It hits her, all in a rush, that she may not have been the only one who was unhappy in their marriage-a possibility she has never once considered before.

"It's very strange to be here," Lucy says. She is sitting at the kitchen table watching Evan fumble with the coffee grinder.

"It's very strange to have you here," Evan admits, and they both have to laugh.

"So you don't mind if I stay for a few days?"

Lucy says once Evan's got the coffee going."A few days?"

"You keep repeating everything I say, only when you say it it sounds like I've committed some sort of criminal offense."

"What about going to Jack and Naomi's?" Evan suggests.

"You're not serious?"

"Actually, I saw him a few weeks ago. He said they hadn't heard from you once since you moved."

"Look, "I stay in the guest room," Lucy says.

"I promise I won't bother your girlfriend."

Evan frowns as he hands Lucy her coffee. She remembers these mugs; she bought them in Bennington, Vermont.

"I wish you wouldn't call her that," Evan says.

"What do you want me to call her?" Lucy asks.

"Miss Garber?"

Evan is so uncomfortable that he turns his back to her, exactly as he used to whenever he didn't want to fight.

"All right," Lucy says. "If you let me stay I'll talk to you about Keith." She doesn't mention that she won't tell him a single bit of truth, but she feels justified in that, since in only a few hours she'll know the ident.i.ty of her murdered neighbor, information she feels is powerful enough to clear Keith of any charges against him.

"I'll discuss it calmly," Lucy promises.

"You'll consider letting him come back?" Evan says.

She can't stand to be with Keith, she does nothing but argue with him, she's not even certain she likes him very much, yet her hands instantly begin to sweat.

"I said I'll talk," Lucy hedges. "I'm willing to do that."

Evan has come to sit across from her at the table. He has something of a grin on his face.

"What happened to your hair?"

Lucy fluffs up her bangs. "Is it awful?" she asks.

"It's very unusual." Evan smiles.

"Oh, great. Thanks. You never liked anything I did with my hair."

"That's not true," Evan says. "Exactly."

Melissa has been standing in the doorway. She has a quilted tote bag over her shoulder, flIled with the clothes she's hurriedly collected from the bedroom."You don't have to leave because of me," Lucy tells her, although she's not sure if she means it.

Melissa looks uncertainly at Evan. He was never much good at awkward moments; Lucy sees now it's because he's too honest to attempt false cheer.

"No. I'll go." Melissa waits a moment to see if anyone is about to stop her. "How's Keith?" she asks Lucy when n.o.body does.