“Don’t look. Kids, don’t look.” It’s too late for that, but she doesn’t know what else to say. She tries to pull them both away, but only Julia goes. Ned lets out this keening cry and lies down on the ground, his hand clenching his mom’s leg. It breaks Iris’s heart. She kneels, puts her hand on the small of his back because she doesn’t know what else to do.

“I tried to get him to move,” one of the joggers says quietly. “He won’t go.”

Iris forces herself to look at Danielle Roberts. The dead woman wears a dark wool coat, jeans, loafers, a dark-gray sweater. Expensive ring on her finger. A massive bruise discolors her throat; blood cakes her mouth, her chin.

“Iris?” the jogger on the phone calls to her. He knows who she is, of course; she isn’t sure of his name in the charge of emotions. She forces herself to flip through her mental catalog of contacts and remembers him. He’s Rachel Sifowicz’s husband. Matt. They have two kids, a senior in high school who plays football and an eighth-grade girl in band. Rachel had to cut back on volunteering when Matt was briefly unemployed after being laid off. Odd rambling thoughts fighting for footing in the slippery slope of her overwhelmed mind.

“Matt,” she says. “Call the police.”

“I did. They’re on their way. I’m on the phone with the emergency operator. They said don’t touch anything.”

“Did you find her?”

“The kids did,” he says. “We heard them screaming and ran here. Is she…for sure?”

Ned found his own mother. Dead. Iris feels faint. She swallows down a tickle of bile. She forces herself to check Danielle’s wrist; she can’t bear to touch that discolored throat. No pulse.

“Yes,” she says. Mom mode. She has to get into mom mode. For both of them.

She looks at the other jogger, a brawny redhead. She doesn’t know his name. “Help me with him,” she says, and he nods.

“Ned,” she whispers. She puts her fingertips on his chin and turns his face toward hers. She has known this boy since he was a toddler. His face is gaunt, his mouth quivering, brown eyes hollow with grief. His breath smells like mouthwash. His dark hair is under a cap. He looks at her like he no longer understands the world.

“Ned, come away.” She can hear the police sirens approaching; he hears them, too, and he shakes his head. Everything is about to change. He can’t let it, she sees; he cannot accept this new world.

“Ned,” she repeats. “Ned.”

He whispers, “Mom can’t be dead. She can’t be.”

“I know, I know. The police are here. Let them help her.”

“Why would anyone hurt her?”

“I don’t know, sweetie. I don’t know. Come with me. Come with us.”