After a moment’s hesitation, he puts the bag in the trash can. It sits next to a matching recycling bin. For a moment he wonders if it’s better to hide the broken phone in the recycling. Will the police be less likely to look there? No, of course not. He is overthinking this, overthinking everything, and that is its own danger. He’ll say or do something suspicious, and he can’t. He mustn’t.

He would like to take the phone’s remains to a dumpster somewhere, but businesses have cameras in parking lots or in alleys now, and he doesn’t want to be captured on film getting rid of anything.

That is something guilty people do.

He goes back inside the house. Grant is sitting at the kitchen island, drinking orange juice, looking at his own phone. He glances up at his father. “Who died in the park, and why didn’t you tell me? Kids are talking about it on Nowpic.”

“I didn’t want to upset you. It’s Danielle Roberts.”

He sees the shock pass along his son’s face.

Grant is not a crier. Kyle always thinks it’s because Grant learned as an infant at that dismal orphanage outside Saint Petersburg that crying got him no extra attention; it was never a solution. His mouth now, though, quivers and he starts to breathe in sharp huffing pains, and Kyle hurries to him, thinking, I’m losing my grip if I thought this was the right way to tell him, and folds his son in an embrace.

“Did she have, like, a heart attack in the park?” Grant manages to ask.

“No, son. No. Someone killed her.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess the police will find out.”

Under his arm, he feels Grant suddenly stiffen. His son disengages from the hug, wanders over to the sink. Then he throws up the gulps of orange juice he’s downed. Kyle, uncertain, puts a reassuring hand on Grant’s back while Grant rinses his mouth with water and spits into the sink.

“I know this is a shock.”

“I wouldn’t be who I am without Danielle. I’d be someone else. Some Russian kid no one wanted. Or adopted by some other family.”

It’s all true, but Kyle doesn’t know what to say to this. The ripples Danielle had set in motion in all their lives. “They’ll find whoever did it,” he repeats.

“Where is Ned? And Mike?”