She shook the backpack again. New sounds—the glug-glug of moving liquid. But the contents continued to elude her guesses—she hadn’t a clue. Hot tears rushed down her cheeks. First Kee Hyun and now her precious Rosie. Mira she’d always felt a stranger to, but Kee Hyun and Rosie she thought she knew completely and absolutely. Yet these two whom she’d loved more than anything in the world had secretly plotted to escape her. And she had read no signs. She wasn’t ready to be bereft again, not so soon.

The door creaked. She heard footsteps moving away from the room. She wiped away her tears and darted to the hall. Could the pizza delivery boy have returned to rob her because she hadn’t tipped him?

She rushed to the kitchen and went straight for her sharpest cleaver. There was a strong chemical odor in the air that irritated her throat—industrial cleaner? Was this the termite poison seeping back again?

“Mira?”

She walked unsteadily back toward the bedrooms, holding the knife in the “stab” grip. A shadow flitted across Rosemary’s door, and it closed.

“Rosie?” she edged up to the doorway, and opened the door.

In Rosemary’s room, again nobody. Just the red backpack. The knife she was holding had beheaded geese and severed pork knuckles. It should have no trouble, she thought, slicing open an American child’s satchel.

She stabbed at it, over and over, weakened only slightly by the sobs that had taken hold of her. This was Christmas Eve! She was a widow! Where were her girls? Why weren’t they with her?

There were enough cuts in the bag for her to dig the blade in and rip out bigger holes. She reached inside the biggest opening and plucked out the first thing she could. A clear glass bottle, filled with a red liquid too dark to be wine; it was labeled blood. The other two bottles she extracted were filled with pale yellow liquid and labeled sweat and tears respectively. This had to be some kind of a joke. But what was the joke? And whose joke was it?

“I not understand!” She wept, gripping the bottles to her chest. “I not understand . . .”

Oversized gray hoodie, blue jeans. Slim and spry, probably prepubescent, most likely a fresh inductee or a lookout. Raymond found the hooded figure a few houses down Des Moines. As soon as he realized he’d been spotted, the boy started running. Raymond gave chase. He dissolved into the shade. Still Raymond chased. He needed to scare him, teach him a lesson.