All these years later, it had stuck in her mind—the announcer’s voice, the teens on the TV screen, the blaze of their shotguns, that very same blaze as in her mother’s eyes. The shock she’d felt. The fear. Robin had never seen Mom that angry, not before then or since. Even her father had seemed confused. The way he’d looked at her, something shifting in his eyes. Calm down, Renee. You’re frightening your daughter.

Robin looked at Eileen. “Your parents let you watch that?”

She shrugged. “It was just a TV movie.”

Robin nodded slowly. “You’re right,” she said. “It was.”

She put her mug of coffee down and stood.

“Robin,” said Eileen. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Robin said, though she couldn’t look at her. “Everything’s fine.”

ALONE AT HER house in the Westchester County suburb of Tarry Ridge, Robin poured herself a glass of sauvignon blanc, made a Gruyère and spinach omelet for one. Her husband had texted her while she was still on the train:

Dinner with important source. Will come home as soon as I can. Love you.

Ok, she’d texted back. Just those two letters. She didn’t trust herself to type more.

The show her husband worked for, Shawn Labatoir’s Anger Management, was a barely controlled vent-fest. A rotating group of so-called pundits screaming at each other without listening as Labatoir stood at his podium, smirking out the easiest seven-figure salary ever. The idea that Eric would be dining with an important, unnamed source for the show was, to put it mildly, hard to believe.

But that wasn’t what had bothered her most about Eric’s text. It had been the Love you part, the way it had been tacked on at the end as an afterthought, a covering of tracks . . .

“Stop.” She said it out loud. “Just stop.”