We scrunched ourselves against the wall of the hallway as more agents on a mission brushed past with fistfuls of evidence. Somewhere in this house, there was a warrant. Cricket had said they’d presented it when they knocked on the door early this morning, but she couldn’t remember where she’d put it.

“Where’s your money, Cricket?” I asked. “There has to be some left.”

“Sure there is.” Cricket’s eyes touched on her hardwood floors, the painted balustrade of the upstairs landing, her custom window treatments. Then she looked back at me. “You’re standing in it.”

Five

“Honey,” I said to Wallis. She was in her bedroom, pulling on a pair of boots. Twenty-four hours after the Feds had ransacked Cricket’s house, the address had been doxed. It was now widely available to anyone with an internet connection. “The photographers are still out there. If you’re going to go out, let me come with you.”

“Fine,” she replied. “But I refuse to hibernate anymore. I’ve been inside for a full day. I’m going to get a coffee, and then I’m coming back. I need to remind myself what fresh air smells like.”

Cricket called my name from downstairs. All morning she’d been showing me the latest news: leaked emails between my father and his girlfriend. They were filthy, as we should’ve expected. She’d learned, after almost forty years of marriage, that her husband had a foot fetish and seemingly loved to describe acts involving breasts, toes, and butts that were, by all accounts, physically impossible.

“Can you wear a hat?” I asked Wallis, ignoring my mother. “Or go out the back and climb over the fence?”

Cricket yelled for me again, louder this time.

“Mom!” Wallis exclaimed. “We’ll be right there. Christ!” Then to me, she said, “Cricket is driving me nuts. At least you have your apartment to escape to. I’m ready to check into a hotel.”

“We don’t have the—” I began, but Cricket, apparently tired of waiting, showed up at Wallis’s door.

“‘You’re slime,’” she read from a letter in her hand. “‘Die already.’” She scoffed. “Modern day Tennyson.”

I took the envelope from Cricket, and when our hands touched, I realized, despite the flippancy, hers trembled. “Is there a return address?” I sounded hoarse.

“Not even a stamp.”

Wallis snatched the paper from me. “‘You’re slime,’” she read. “You’re—Y.O.U.R. This person is garbage. He probably isn’t smart enough to blow his own nose.”

“Wallis,” I said. “They were here, they hand delivered it to our mailbox. I think we need to call the police.”