“Frank?” Emily wanted to check with him before she signed. She was surprised when Frank gave her a distracted nod. He was staring at the box of padlocks, his fists clenched. That’s when Emily realized: this was the first moment her misadventure had touched his things.

28

AFTER THE POLICE left, Frank went directly to the basement, closing the bulkhead door behind him. Emily pulled her car into the driveway and picked up her gear bag. She hoped that, with a more careful search of its interior, she’d find the padlock key. But even after she’d emptied everything out onto the passenger seat, she couldn’t find it. What she did find at the bottom of the bag was her stun gun. Lila had taken one look at it and proclaimed it dead. Was it? Emily took it out, held it stiff-armed, and pressed the trigger.

No bug-zapper snap. All she got was a tiny spark and a dead-sounding clicking, a miniature version of the sound her car made trying to start on a dead battery. Emily had no idea where she’d stashed the charger. She returned the stun gun and the rest of the contents to her gear bag and put it on the backseat of her car. Then she entered the house.

The police had turned the place upside down and left the air smelling of testosterone and sweat and something almost medicinal, like hand sanitizer. Lila was in the living room, restoring order: plumping sofa cushions and straightening piles of mail, lining up photos and books on their shelves.

Emily went through the first floor and opened the windows as wide as they’d go. Then she went up to her bedroom. She stood in the doorway and took in the mess. Bedding was pulled back. Bureau drawers and the clothes hamper were open, the contents spilled onto the floor, higgledy-piggledy.

Her closet door was open and the clothes she’d carefully folded and hung in her newly installed closet system were a jumbled mess. The clothing she’d bagged to give away had been dumped on the floor.

That smell was up here, too. Emily opened the windows, then scooped up all of her socks and underwear and dumped them into a laundry basket. She started to strip the bed, attacking the top sheet, then the bottom sheet. Hurling them into the laundry basket. If there’d been room, she’d have added everything else the police had laid hands on. In the closet. In the room. In the house.

“Emmy, dear?” Her mother stood in the bedroom doorway.

“What?” Emily grabbed a pillow.

“Can I help?”

“No.” Emily yanked the pillow from its case. “Thanks.”