Okay, it wasn’t quite a lie—odds were Mother would find some reason to drop by tonight, if only for a few moments; and it had been at least a week since she’d dragged me off to some corner of the house to propose a decorating scheme, so we were probably overdue for that, too. I threw on some clothes, waved at the snakes for what I hoped would be the last time, and went up to clean the kitchen—which could use a good scrub, even if Rob had seriously exaggerated the damage done by Timmy’s diaper-slinging.

As I scrubbed, I kept an ear open to make sure the splashing and squeals of laughter from upstairs still sounded as if both boys were happy. After Timmy’s bath, it would be time for his supper, followed by watching some of his favorite videos and then getting him into pajamas and reading him a few stories.

I supposed I could have delegated more of it to Rob, or to the various other family members who had begun drifting in. But I was feeling irrationally guilty for dragging Timmy to a murder scene and then abandoning him to Rob’s care. And I also found it a lot easier to forget about finding Jasper’s body with Timmy around.

Although having Timmy around didn’t ease my anxiety about Karen. Quite the contrary.

I continued to brood and fret, unnoticed by the rest of the family—possibly because I spent a lot of my time in the kitchen, cleaning up, or in the basement, catching up on the laundry. At least until Michael came home.

“What’s wrong?” he asked about two seconds after he clattered down the stairs to find me.

“Apart from the fact that we still have too many snakes?”

“One is too many,” he said. “What else is wrong? You look worried.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “At least nothing that hasn’t been wrong for the last several days.”

“But it’s starting to get to you,” he said. He pulled a stack of clean but tangled laundry toward him and began sorting it out.

“How can she just leave him here like this?” I said.

“I know it feels like a big imposition,” Michael began.

“Screw the imposition,” I said. “I’m not talking about the effect on us. Clearly Timmy needs a safe place to stay for whatever reason—no problem. He can absolutely stay here as long as he needs to. But what kind of a mother could leave her kid somewhere for three days with people she doesn’t know that well, on no notice, and not even call to see if he’s okay?”

“A pretty lousy mother,” Michael said. “Which Karen isn’t, as far as I can see.”

“You’ve only met her a couple of times,” I said. “How can you possibly know what kind of a mother she is?”

“From Timmy. He’s a pretty good kid. Rambunctious and headstrong—I suspect she’s a little more indulgent than I would be—kids need limits. But then again, we don’t know what he’s like at home, under normal, unstressed conditions. I suspect she does a decent job of parenting, so dumping him here on no notice and disappearing for days isn’t in character. Which means there must be something else going on. I have no idea what.”