My heart stopped. I could only imagine Grace curled up in the corner, shaking and frightened. I wanted to run and tackle him and yell for Grace to run. But I didn’t. I just stood as frozen by guilt as fear.

“Are you Madeline Webb?” he asked. I couldn’t hear Grace say anything but from the officer’s body language I knew that Grace had responded. “Let’s go, Madeline, it’s time to go home.”

Only then did I hear Grace’s soft voice. I don’t know what she said, but the sound of it sent chills through me. More than anything I wanted to run. The Bible talks of a sinner feeling shame so great that he wishes for a mountain to fall on him. At that moment I wished for that mountain. Or one of Khrushchev’s missiles.

The officer stood back from the door. And then I saw her, her hands in the snow, her head crowning at the entrance. She pushed herself up. She had nothing with her but her coat.

“Are you okay?” Officer Steele asked. She nodded slightly. She didn’t look at me. I didn’t know what I would do if she did. “Have you been kept here against your will?”

“No.”

“You’re not going to try to run away from us are you?” the young policeman asked. “We don’t want to handcuff you.”

“Don’t touch her,” I said.

Only then did she look at me, and I saw in her eyes that she was no longer mine to protect. I had lost the right to speak for her.

Officer Steele put his hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her forward. She walked ahead of us, flanked by the policemen. My parents walked behind me. When we got to the driveway the young officer opened the back door of the patrol car and Grace got in. She didn’t even look at me.

My parents and I stood there at the edge of our driveway. I had never felt more alone in my life. I felt estranged even from myself, brimming with self-hate. In the darkness beneath the trees the policemen were no longer people, like Grace, they had turned to shadow, like shades in the land of the dead, on the banks of the river Styx.

The patrol car’s engine roared to life, then its headlights blinked on, momentarily blinding us. The car pulled out of our driveway, crunching and spinning on the icy gravel.

I just stood there. After all we’d been through, just like that she was gone.

My dad said, “Let’s go to bed, Eric. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Then my mom said, “You did the right thing.”

At that moment I saw that my parents were as capable of evil and stupidity as anyone who has ever walked this planet. They were as capable of evil as me.