The FBI immediately released Nora from custody, knowing that cooperation would no longer be a problem. From what Sam said, she was even more of a basket case than he was. But she cooperated with a vengeance. Whatever hold Neil had over her, it could not compare with her love of her son. She was baying for Neil's blood, Sam told him.

Her tone hesitantly suggested he should be too.

But nothing was real. His son was gone and nothing was real.

Except Ripley.

Ripley had difficulty understanding what was happening. She missed Frankie, Thomas imagined, but the idea that something truly horrific had happened was something she had to borrow continually from adults. Thomas was tormented by the knowledge that for her the trauma lied in his manifestations of grief and bewilderment. But for those first three days seeing her filled him with a sense of desperation unlike anything he had experienced. He couldn't look at her without either seeing Frankie or the monstrous shadow of Neil—without seeing his loss or his demon. Even though going to work was out of the question, he still sent her over to Mia's for a few hours during the day.

She didn't complain.

Nora, Sam told him, was too much a wreck to look after herself, let alone her daughter. She blamed herself, Thomas knew.

And perhaps she should.

Using the investigation as a pretext, Thomas found himself interrogating Sam on the details of Nora's statement. As Thomas suspected, Nora had started her affair with Neil before, not after, their marriage. Apparently it had been an impulsive, drunken thing, which they had immediately regretted and swore they would never do again because of their love for Thomas.

Thomas wept at this point, and Sam stopped, promising to bring him a copy of the transcript—even though it could mean her job. The important thing was finding Frankie, she said.

It was both easier and more difficult, for some reason, reading Nora's actual words. The intimacy of the transcribed discussion seemed at once shocking, and yet strangely appropriate to a conversation between strangers. What could strangers do with such small and catastrophic honesty?

After a hiatus of years, Nora and Neil had resumed their relationship around the same time her marriage had started to seriously stumble. Nora chalked it up to coincidence, but Thomas knew better. Shared secrets fostered intimacy, while lies deadened it. The spouse being cheated on literally had no chance, outside inertia and the fear of financial ruin. He or she was bound to seem pathetic or judgmental or insensitive or what have you. People always justified their crimes.