Luke dropped the baseball bat and pounced at the back door. He turned the lock, threw the bolt, and lunged outside in one ungainly sequence. Kitty flinched, then looked up at him. Her eyes were wide, shocked with tears. Blood smeared the left side of her forehead.

“Kitty, Jesus . . . Jesus Christ.”

Her mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. Luke reached to take her hand but this obviously wasn’t enough, because she scrabbled to her feet and threw her arms around him.

“Okay, Kitty . . . it’s okay now.”

Her body felt small and hurt but her arms were strong. She held him as if the world were falling away beneath her.

His spare room was a catastrophe. There was a bed in there somewhere, concealed beneath an epic mound of worthless crap: totes crammed with VHS cassettes, a torn sleeping bag, a broken curtain rod, three boxes of headshots that would never be signed and sent out to fans. Clothes and towels were scattered across the top. More clothes—most of them Lisa’s—crowded the closet. There was an out-of-tune acoustic guitar in the corner, and a desk with an old TV on it. A thick, feathery dust coated the screen.

Luke had given Kitty a glass of cold water and used a soft cloth to wipe the blood from her forehead. He’d tried leading her into the living room to sit down, but she pulled back, pointing at the window. “They can see in,” she said, trembling, clutching at him. So he sat her at the breakfast bar and rubbed her back while she sobbed.

“Kitty, what’s going on?” he’d asked. “Do I need to call the police?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. Her hands shook as she lifted the glass to her lips and drank. “Right now I need a hot shower and a long sleep.”

So he showed her to the bathroom, and put a fresh (sort of) towel and some clean clothes—Lisa’s—out for her, then began cleaning the spare room. Kitty was a long time in the shower, which was just as well, because there was a lot of crap to clear. He moved most of it to the garage, piling it on top of the useless crap already in there. The rest he reassigned to his bedroom, where it would probably stay until he got his head together enough to deal with it.

He found some clean (sort of) sheets and made the bed, then closed the blinds. Perfect timing. Kitty stepped out of the bathroom wearing Lisa’s Lakers top and PJ bottoms. They looked quite alike—the former detective Tera Montecino had been right about that—but not in this moment. Kitty was a fraction of her usual self. Her skin was dull, her body drawn inward, like a plant that needed water.

“Better?” Luke asked. He didn’t know what else to say.