“Get out of my way!” Phil gripped his father’s arm and roughly pushed him aside.

His father lost his balance, falling hard on his side. “Mike, stop him!” he yelled as he struggled to his feet.

Phil wrenched open the door, but was engulfed in his brother’s powerful arms before he made it outside. “Calm down!” Mike, who outweighed Phil by thirty pounds, dragged him backwards.

“Let me go!” Phil elbowed him hard in the stomach, causing Mike to fall back against the stairs, and then he was lunging for the door and his escape.

He was halfway out when his father grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and he was again dragged backwards. Before he could fight his way free, Mike was lifting him by his legs and dropping him to the floor, then following, trapping Phil’s flailing body beneath his own.

“Get the fuck off me! Get off! Lina needs me! I need to go to Lina!”

“Phil, wake up!” His father was kneeling beside his head, holding down his shoulders as Mike struggled to keep the rest of his body pinned. “Son, you’re dreaming.”

“I’m not fucking dreaming! Lina is in trouble.” His face was bright red.

“It’s one o’clock in the morning. Lina’s home in bed.”

“No—God! Let me go!” Phil fought to free himself, managing to roll onto his side, but he was no match for the combined weight of his brother and father and was quickly subdued, his face pushed hard against the floor.

“Honey, what’s her phone number?” his mother asked, rushing up with a cordless phone. She quickly dialed the number Phil recited. “No answer,” she said after several seconds. “Did you talk to her on the phone? Did she call you?”

“No, Mom, please.” Phil was crying. “I need to go to Lina. Lina needs me. I know she needs me. Mom, please,” he cried. “Please.”

“Take him,” his mother said. “Take him, Bruce.”

“Faster!” Phil yelled less than a minute later. “There’s something wrong.” He stared out the window, unfocused, clenching and unclenching his hands as he endured the longest five minutes of his life.

As soon as their car turned up Lina’s lane, Phil’s eyes focused on a white van in her driveway, and his heart began to pound. He was out of the car and running towards her front door before his father had the car in park, Mike on his heels.

Mr. Hunter slammed the driver’s door and was jogging towards the house when he heard Phil’s heart-wrenching scream. “Lina!” And then, seconds later, his older son’s, “Call 911!”

1

Twenty-four Years Later

Lina Hunter heard the sound of the shower running when she entered her bedroom. It was Phil. She’d seen his car in the garage when she arrived home from the grocery store moments earlier. She crossed to the garment bag splayed out on their bed and began unpacking his clothes, hanging his suits in the wardrobe and tossing his dirty shirts and underwear into a hamper. She frowned when she saw a pink tie looped around a hanger with one of his suits. He didn’t wear pink. She recalled the time early in their marriage when he refused to wear a salmon-colored shirt she bought him, claiming real men didn’t wear pink and yet, as she studied a small stain marring the silk material, it was obvious he had worn it. Where had it come from? She knew it wasn’t in his bag when he left for his business trip four days earlier because she had packed for him.