I turn to everyone else and say, “Bonnie’s house is directly across the street. Jorge, Don, and I will go first and try to clear a path.”

“Oh, and another thing,” I say. “Bonnie says she has Cranium.”

::::

By 3:26 a.m., everyone is settled in at Bonnie’s.

I trudge back through the snow, which is still coming down hard, and back to my father’s house.

“Ingrid!” I shout.

“I’m right here,” she says, coming down the stairs. She has swapped out the wedding dress for jeans and a Washington Redskins sweatshirt. She lets out a long sigh and says, “That was the greatest pee of my life.”

“I bet,” I say, pulling her to me.

We hold each other for a long moment, then I say, “I thought you were dead.”

I feel her dissolve in my arms.

She would have been the strong one, the one who, from behind the duct tape, was murmuring to others that everything was going to be okay. But now, the tears run freely.

“It was impossible to tell time down there,” she says with a loud sniff. “I was sure 3:00 a.m. passed hours earlier and that maybe you were—”

She stops, wipes her eyes, then finishes, “Then we heard the footsteps.”

We hold each for a couple minutes, then she wipes her eyes with her sweatshirt. Her gaze moves over my shoulder to where Marshall’s body lay on the floor.

“Poor Linda,” she says. “I have to call her. And Billy’s mother. Oh, God.”

She pulls out her cell phone, then realizes that it’s mine. That their numbers aren’t programmed.

I gaze at Red.

I’m not sure if he had any family.

My eyes begin to mist over and I wipe them. I let out a long exhale and ask, “What happened?”

Ingrid takes a deep breath and says, “After I got you upstairs, I came back down. With the snow, no one really wanted to leave and we kept dancing.”

“Even Sullivan? I thought he would have left right at 4:00 a.m.”

“Yeah, me too, but he seemed to be having just as much fun as everyone else. He and Marshall were chatting in the corner for quite a while, but he made it onto the dance floor for a couple songs.”

“I’m surprised Red didn’t make him leave, with the snow and all.”

“I don’t think they were too concerned. They were in a friggin’ Range Rover. Plus, Red kept looking out the window to make sure it wasn’t getting too bad.”

Was one of those lumps of snow out front the President’s Range Rover? Did it have tracking? Of course not. They wouldn’t use a car from the presidential motor pool. Not if they were going to sneak out.

Ingrid takes another deep breath, then continues, “At around 4:30 a.m., Megan put on this old song and we start doing this dance we used to do in seventh grade. Everyone is laughing, having a great time, then the front door bursts open and three men barge in and start screaming in Arabic.”