Wendy lay on her back in the grass. The fireworks were over. Tupper and Roy and Dr. Conway and the other remaining guests conversed in low, soothing voices. The stars glimmered. The air smelled of fireplaces. The bonfire crackled. Wendy made a mental note to ask Roy if it wouldn’t be interesting to have the teenagers in his Mars book smoke Mars-grown marijuana. It seemed plausible. And once their inhibitions were loosened they could do something really crazy, like steal a rover or a rocket or whatever they drove up there and discover new, unknown life-forms.

A stocky teenage boy straddling a bicycle rolled into the garden from the alleyway. Roy must have left the gate unlocked. Wendy pushed herself up on her elbows.

“Fire! Fire! Fire!” the boy shouted. He was red in the face and his eyes bulged.

“Shshh.” Wendy heard someone say. Or maybe she’d said it.

“Fire!” the boy shouted again. “There’s a kid in the house,” he sputtered, his face impossibly red. “I think he’s trapped in there. His parents are at a party.”

“It’s Bonfire Night,” Wendy told him.

The boy stared at her with wide, bloodshot eyes. A fire truck roared by, its siren wailing.

“Fire!” he shouted again.

Peaches shivered and squinted up at the stars. Mandy was sure taking her sweet time in the tunnel. She could tell Mandy she’d kissed her husband—that would get her out fast.

A gigantic ladder fire truck whooshed down Kane Street, sirens blasting. It ran the light at Clinton and flew over the speed bumps.

“Dudes,” Peaches complained, “this is a school zone. They’re going to run over someone.”

Inside the tunnel, Mandy checked her texts.

I don’t have Ted. I thought you had him.

No, I’m outside with Greg. I’m sure he’s fine.

Mandy slid out of the tunnel.

He probs went home by himself. I’m in the schoolyard.

Turning around. Meet you in a sec.

“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” Greg told Stuart, who had suddenly turned around and was half running, half walking back the way they’d come. “I’d take these off, except those fire trucks are really loud.”

Tupper went indoors. Elizabeth had not returned. She must have been chatting with someone in the kitchen.

“Elizabeth?” he called into the empty rooms.

Most of the other guests had left when the fireworks stopped. The caterers were scraping leftovers into tidy Tupperware containers for Wendy to take back to the office to nibble on during the week.

“Have you seen Elizabeth?” Tupper asked them.

“Elizabeth? Tall blonde in the orange prison suit?”

Tupper nodded.

“She just left.”

Tupper checked the downstairs bathroom and master bathroom just to be sure. He checked the basement and the towel cupboard and the coat closet. But it was just as the caterers had said. Elizabeth was gone.

“Shy?”

It was her father, right outside the door.