She cleans James’s blood off the floor and searches for pieces of window glass with a flashlight. There’s glass everywhere, blown far into the room, under chairs and in the cracks between the old pine floorboards. There are long, thin shards like daggers and tiny specks that catch the glow of the flashlight.

“The brick,” I tell Mom, pointing to where James lay.

It looks like one of the chimney bricks that washed up next to the water where our house flooded.

Dad is outside boarding up the broken window with a piece of plywood when the policewoman comes. She’s as tall as Dad and has hair the color of a hay bale. A mix of yellow and brown twisted in a knot on the back of her head. She looks very young, like the photographs of James’s mother holding him when he was a baby.

She picks up the brick with plastic gloves and puts it in a plastic bag.

After she talks to Mom and Dad, she pulls a chair up to the recliner where I’m sitting and takes out a small pad and pen. She taps the pen on the pad. Rap rap rap.

“Henry, my name is Charlotte Rose and I need to ask you some questions. First, did you hear or see anything before this happened?”

I think about the night the meteorite landed in the field. How I’d first heard a rustling sound and woke up and saw the flash of light. When the brick came through the window, there was no warning at all.

“No.”

“Did you look out the window afterwards?”

“No.”

The policewoman is writing things down on her pad. I don’t know if she’s writing my answers. No. No.

“Did you hear a car or anyone walking around outside?”

“No.” I try to read her notes from the recliner to see if she wrote a third no on her little pad, but her hand is in the way.

“Did anyone else see the brick come through the window?”

“My little sister, Birdie, was there. She called Mom. James had his back to the window.”

“I see.” The policewoman writes down something else. Then, for the second time today, I’m handed a business card.

“Here’s my card, Henry. If you remember anything else, just call me at this number. I’m sorry about your friend.”

Charlotte Rose stands and shakes Mom’s and Dad’s hands.

“We’ll get to the bottom of this. We take acts of violence very seriously,” she tells them before she leaves.

When I put the business card in my pocket, I feel the note I took off the brick.

I pull it out and open it up. It’s smeared with James’s blood.

I read the note again.