Their healthy baby boy was delivered by caesarean section. They named him Daniel after Nathan’s father, and Raphael for the Italian painter, whose work Maggie adored. Danny was her hope, her light, her angel. His birth reaffirmed the love between her and Nathan and resurrected the artistic dreams she had buried with the loss of their first baby. Here, in this refurbished attic, Maggie produced a succession of inspired water colors, which sold regularly at a gallery down the peninsula.

Maggie pulled off the tarpaulin covering a landscape in progress, collected her brushes, and inhaled the fragrance of paints and freshly cut grass wafting into her studio.

Her life was perfect now.

The train came to the next stop. The automatic doors opened. Dank air rushed into the car as Danny watched the people leaving jostle with those getting on. Then a short warning chime echoed. “Doors closing,” Danny said. He had picked up the routine. Three seconds later, the doors closed. The train jolted forward, gathering speed, pulling them deeper into the tunnel system.

“How many more stops, Dad?”

“Uh-huh,” Nathan said, eyes locked onto his newspaper, oblivious to the new passengers crowding the car. He had slipped comfortably into his commuter habit of losing himself in his newspaper.

Danny looked at his dad reading. He was bored, so he stared at his own hand and counted his fingers. Remembering the hotdog he had at the game, he licked his lips and wished for another one. He yawned. He looked up across the car at Tanita Marie Donner’s face, slid off of his seat, and stood next to it, facing the poster.

“I’m just going right here, Dad.”

“All right,” the newspaper said.

The train wavered. Danny steadied himself, noticing a tiny, silver chain dangling from the ear of a teenager down the aisle. It glinted rhythmically with the train’s rocking motion, like a hypnotist’s watch, bidding Danny closer. He stepped carefully around the outstretched, tanned legs of a boy studying a motorcycle magazine, head bobbing to music leaking from the headset of his CD player. Suddenly a skateboard shot at Danny. He tensed before it was stopped by a scuffed Reebok worn by a girl in an oversized sweatshirt. Danny moved on, paying no attention to the other passengers until he stood before the teenager wearing the chain. His face was ravaged by acne. His jet-black mohawk hair was greased into six-inch spikes frozen in coiffured explosion. He wore black boots, torn black pants, a black T-shirt with a death’s head that was partially hidden by his silver-studded black leather jacket.

Danny pointed at the chain. “What’s that?”