Going down the lower hallway in a silence that was broken only by the soft frictive shuffle of her own bare feet, she kept picturing the worst—he’d got lost in the woods, drowned in the lake, locked himself in the walk-in fridge—while reassuring herself that there had to be some obvious explanation. It was a big house. He could be anywhere. He did tend to nod off wherever he was—and he’d been doing it since he was a child, one minute adamantly insisting he wasn’t tired and had to watch just one more show on the television, please, please, please, and the next passed out at the kitchen table or in the depths of one of the armchairs. She saw movement at the end of the hall and caught herself till she realized it was a cat, one of the three cats currently inhabiting the place, the vanguard of countless cats—and dogs and a single monkey that had the destructive power of a whole troop—to come. The cat froze in mid-stride, one paw lifted delicately as if to put it down would cause the floor to detonate. It regarded her steadily a moment, then dropped the paw and vanished into the shadows.

It was then that she thought she heard music playing, very faintly—so faintly she had to hold her breath to be sure, but yes, somebody’s stereo was going. She stood there a moment, listening, until she realized what it was—the Beatles, Charlie’s group, their voices reduced to a squeak and the guitars lowered to an insectoid whine, only the insistent drum clearly audible—and that it seemed to be coming from one of the Eggerses’ rooms. Which was strange, unless Charlie was with Royce and Susannah, turning them on to this new musical wonder—or, which was more likely, he’d loaned it to one of the kids, because really, no matter what Charlie might say, this was the most juvenile music she could imagine. When she got closer, she realized the sound was coming not from Royce and Susannah’s room, but from Nancy’s, which was two doors up from theirs.