Mrs. Boucher worked in the courts, and she probably knew more about Wilson than we did. “I better get going. You’ll lock the house behind me?”

“There won’t be anyone here like that ever again, Mrs. Boucher. I promise.”

I watched the taillights of the Volvo blink through the dark woods, up toward the road, and then disappear as the theme music came on for The Incredible Hulk.

“Libby, Hulk, Hulk.” Peter was getting very excited. He stood in front of the TV as the theme music played, raising his shoulders and lifting his arms out wide.

“I’m the Hulk!” he shouted.

The episode was titled “The Beast Within.” I knew it would give him nightmares. He’d seen Hulk once before when he’d gone for a sleepover at his grandparents’; every Friday for a month, I’d had to stay with him in his room until he fell asleep.

“They have no sense,” Mrs. Boucher had said after the nightmares started. “This is exactly why I’ve told their father I don’t want them staying there. They’d think nothing of watching The Exorcist with the kids. I admire your mother for not having a television.”

“Come on, Peter. I’ll race you downstairs to the bathroom, and we’ll brush our teeth.”

Mrs. Boucher never told me where she went those Friday nights. I hadn’t babysat for many families, but the other ones had always told me where they were going and given me a number for the restaurant or friends’ house. Mrs. Boucher only left an emergency number, which was Mr. Boucher’s. He lived with his soon-to-be new wife. My mother said Mrs. Boucher was an “intellectual” and one of those “feminists,” like they were bad words. I wondered what had happened to her marriage. Like my parents, the Bouchers were divorced, but they were so different in every other way. I’d met Mr. Boucher several times. Once Marie and I had bumped into him and his fiancée at the Acme. We’d gone in for doughnuts and watched them kissing by the seafood section, where whole fish were splayed out on ice, heads and all.

“Oh my God,” Marie had said, “Barbie and Ken.” He did look like a Ken doll. “He’s so artificial-looking. I just want to run over and mess up his hair.” His fiancée, Angela, was as tall as him. Her blond hair was cut and frosted just like Farrah Fawcett’s. She was extremely tanned and wore a bright-orange dress. She seemed young and silly compared to Mrs. Boucher, who was small and dark but somehow more anchored and elegant than either of them.