“And how long does this process take?”

“Six months. Give or take.”

“Six?”

“If things go smoothly.”

Harris looked at him.

“OK,” he said. “Anything else?”

“An unsolicited piece of advice. If I may.”

“OK.”

“You should hire an attorney. One specializing in adoptions. And licensed in Jersey, of course,” Gordon said. “Believe me, you don’t want to enter this process unrepresented. It is full of land mines.”

Half a minute passed. Harris remembered his breathing exercises. He inhaled, exhaled. Inhaled, exhaled.

“Don’t you think maybe that’s another little something you could’ve mentioned to me beforehand?” he said finally.

Gordon scratched under his chin.

“Now that you mention it,” he said, smiling, “I do.”

New Jersey

Musil did a full walk around, saw nothing unusual and decided to retrace his steps in case he’d missed something. Partway through his second circuit, he heard branches rustling in a tall blue spruce alongside the house.

He paused, glanced up toward the noise and saw a squirrel with pouched-out cheeks leap from the tree to the roof and then disappear over its sloping side. Possibly he had found Clara’s cereal-eating culprit. It could have established a nest in the attic.

He didn’t notice anything else of any interest. The cereal box aside, Gelfland had left the premises in good shape. Of course, he had been gone four months. The whole winter. Wind, rain, snow and the other elements would have obliterated most signs of...

Of what?

Musil really didn’t know. But he sympathized with Clara and wouldn’t dismiss her concerns. Based on what she’d told him, Gelfland did seem to have acted out of character by not calling her before traveling to Massachusetts—and later leaving on the Stalwart cruise. But that didn’t make him the victim of a crime. People were complicated. They did things for all kinds of reasons. There might have been some personal issue he didn’t want to share with his family. Or maybe he’d just been busy or forgetful. The mundane explanations most often proved to be the right ones.

Still, Musil was intent on being thorough. Clara had given him the Toyota’s key fob. He would look inside the car and see what he could find.

He walked across the front yard to the driveway. As he neared its paved edge, he once again noticed the pile of unraked autumn leaves alongside it on the grass. Gelfland’s trees and shrubs all seemed to be evergreens, so Musil guessed they had blown onto the lawn from the road or a neighbor’s house. Out of curiosity, he crouched to pluck up one of the rain-warped newspaper sheets. The paper was discolored and the print washed out, but he was able to read the December 4 date on the top left.