Dennis turned and ran for the stairs. Halfway up, he stopped and sat down, grabbing the balusters and peering through them like he was behind bars. He couldn’t see much of the kitchen, but he didn’t need to. A chair scraped across the floor and thudded as it tipped over. A pan slammed against the top of the stove. A glass broke.

“Here’s my fucking dinner?”

“I’m sorry, Frank. It’s late. I’m tired.”

“You’re tired? I’m the one that’s been working all night. I finally get home and all I want is a little dinner, and you can’t manage that?”

His mother started to cry. “I’m sorry!”

There was a silence then that made Dennis more nervous than the yelling. He jumped a little when his father emerged from the kitchen, his expression dark, his hands on his hips. He turned and looked straight up at Dennis.

“What are you looking at?”

Dennis turned and ran up the stairs, stumbling twice, trying to go faster than his legs could possibly manage. He ran into his room and into his closet, pulling the door shut behind him and hiding himself under a pile of dirty clothes.

He lay there for a long time, trying not to breathe too loud, trying to hear over the pounding of his pulse in his ears, waiting for the door to fly open. But a minute went by and nothing happened. Then another minute . . . then another. . . until finally he fell asleep.

Chapter 8

8

Wednesday, October 9, 1985

“I can’t believe there was a murder and you didn’t call me!”

“I had a few other things on my mind,” Anne said.

They stood outside the door to the kindergarten room, on the patio near the sandbox where half a dozen of Franny’s charges were busy with toy dump trucks and shovels and buckets.

Fran Goodsell, her best friend. Thirty-nine, cute as a button, irreverent as he could be. She should have called him, she thought now.

Franny had a way of turning situations upside down. He would have somehow found a way to distract her from the horror of what had happened. He would have said something outrageous, made a completely inappropriate remark, found a way to give her a lighter moment.

That would have beat the hell out of lying awake all night, seeing every detail when she closed her eyes: the mangled hand reaching out of the ground, quietly begging assistance to rise up from the shallow grave.

“Don’t you watch the news?” she asked.

“Of course not,” he said, offended by the very idea. “There’s nothing good on the news.” His eyes went wide as he was struck suddenly with a possibility. “Did they interview you? Oh my God. I hope you weren’t still wearing that outfit you wore to school yesterday. You looked like a novice nun.”

True to form.