Kate halted abruptly at the door to the front bedroom and gasped. There was a huge ragged hole in the ceiling. She looked through the hole into the third-floor attic room and a corresponding hole in the attic roof. Chunks of plaster were strewn about the room, sunlight poured through the roof, and a mist of fine powder floated in the air like fairy dust. The queen-size bed had collapsed, a scarred chunk of twisted metal lay square in the middle of the mattress.

“My Lord, what is it?” Kate asked

David approached it cautiously. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s a camera pod from the helicopter. I used to do a lot of photography. Once I did an aerial survey for a new subdivision in Fairfax County, and we had an auxiliary video camera mounted on a pod like this.”

Kate felt dazed. A helicopter part had fallen through her roof. It made perfect sense. That was the sort of week she was having. On Wednesday her accountant had called to say her taxes were being audited. She’d gotten a speeding ticket on Thursday and a parking ticket on Friday. And this morning the cleaners had informed her of a “small mishap” to her favorite black coat.

It was all too much even for Katherine Finn, a master at defusing frustration. She was a professional musician, a child prodigy who’d begun auditioning at the age of seven. By the time she was twelve she’d suffered more stress, humiliation, and rejection than most people do in a lifetime… and she’d also reaped more rewards and more successes.

She didn’t have a temperamental or mean bone in her entire body, but early on she’d learned how to manipulate, how to protect her ego, how to throw a well-aimed temper tantrum. Katherine Finn would never have a heart attack from suppressing emotion. Katherine Finn smashed plates, hugged babies, devoured food, and cried buckets at weddings, funerals, and sad movies.

“Do you know what this used to be?” she shouted at David Dodd as she furiously paced beside the bed. “This used to be a brand-new three-hundred-dollar feather quilt. Prime goose down that was going to keep me warm this winter.”

David raised his eyebrows and looked at the quilt with obvious envy.

“I suppose you think goose down grows on trees. Well, let me tell you, I worked long and hard for that stupid goose down. And now what? Who’s going to pay for this?” She paused and ran a hand through her hair. “I should call someone,” she said. “My insurance company, the police, the airport. Bloomingdale’s linen department.”