“Closer to downtown. I drove past those new condo developments the other day. The more expensive ones look like they’re a decent size—big enough for the five of us. And they have video surveillance.”

“You’ll have to convince the kids first. They won’t want to give up their swimming pool.”

“I think they’d rather live close to school and downtown. Thom and Emma complain every day about how far they have to bike.”

“Thom will be riding a scooter soon enough.” Werner bent over to pick up a stick. “Honestly, it’s no safer downtown than where we live now. I think the reverse might even be true.” He weighed the stick, tried to bend it, and leaned on it briefly. Snapped off various twigs. “The idea that you would be safe in any particular place is wishful thinking. Nowhere is truly safe.”

Helen stood still. “Maybe it’s more of a feeling. Our house is out in the farthest corner of the neighborhood; the yard is so big. And then those woods all around it. That gloomy embankment.”

“You used to think all those things were advantages.”

“I know. Now I’ve realized they also make us vulnerable.”

“We were just unlucky,” he said, and continued walking.

Unlucky. So that was his view of the matter. Werner wasn’t very sensitive to atmosphere. Never had been. In the immediate aftermath of the robbery, he had found it hard to spend time in the bedroom—perhaps more than anything because of the feeling of powerlessness he had experienced in there. But that had only been a brief phase. For her, though, the house was tainted forever. The walls of the bedroom, the kitchen, and the basement were stained with ghastly memories. Quite literally. Even if she redecorated the entire house, she would still know what was hidden underneath. It would remain there for all eternity, like a bricked-up corpse.

They had approached a flock of sheep on the hillside. Yellowy white, with long tails and swiveling ears perched on top of their heads. Some of them interrupted their grazing and watched them, still chewing, their ears pricked up like rabbits.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” she asked.

“Of course we are—take a look for yourself.” He pointed to a section higher up, where a wooden signpost was standing in the grass. The trail up to and along the Seven Sisters was marked out with these signposts, but the path itself was almost invisible. It was nothing more than a tendril winding across the landscape, scarcely a hand’s width across, on which the grass looked slightly shorter—or maybe it was just growing at a different angle.

Werner stopped for a moment and turned to face her, leaning on his stick. “Listen, Helen—if it would make you feel better, then maybe we should give some serious thought to selling the house.”