A lamp was on in the living room, but she wasn’t there. “Alma!” he shouted again, so strenuously it hurt his throat and strained the tendons in his neck. It felt satisfying. He stormed across the living room and back into the kitchen, where the lights were on, shouting her name again and again. She wasn’t in the kitchen, and she wasn’t in the dining room, and when he entered the living room again he stopped short, halted by the sight of a small old man at the foot of the stairs, in his bedclothes and slippers, pointing a gun at him.

“You stop there,” the old man said. “You stay right there and don’t you move.”

Henry held his hands up. “Sir,” he said. “There’s been a mistake.”

“I’ll say.”

The gun seemed too big for the old man, and it trembled in his hands. Henry had never had a gun aimed at him before. Even at ten yards away, the little black hole of the barrel dominated the room.

The stairs popped and he looked up to see an old woman standing in her nightgown, looking down at him in terror, her hand to her chest. “Oh, Francis, do be careful.”

“Call the police,” the man said, not taking his eyes off Henry. “And don’t come down here until I tell you.”

The woman hurried back up the stairs.

“Sir,” Henry said, “there’s no need to do that. I’ll just go. I came in here by mistake. I’m sorry.”

“You’re the one’s been in here,” the man said. “You and this—Alma?”

“I’ll never come back here again, I swear. I’m not a bad person.”

“You stay right there,” the man said. “I have shot a man before, and I am not afraid to do it again.”