“No way you’re going by yourself. Cate killed one of them, but the other is still unaccounted for.”

And so Cate drives Joe the two blocks to the 7-Eleven. Their easy, oblivious days are behind them. Now they must protect themselves.

When they’re back, Joe takes his doughnuts upstairs and Cate opens two cans of diet ginger ale, then drops to the floor next to Neale, thinking how could you be closer to someone than saving them? This horrible event has brought them to a new place, past the ordinary configurations of friendship, which now look like preliminaries. Of course, she can’t bring herself to say this.

Neale says, “The other thing I feel bad about is that, although I am totally grateful, what you did was really too much for any friend. The whole mess itself was too big, then your response had to be so huge, so way off the edges of anything. It’s hard to put everything back to regular.” Then, after a bit more worthless rubbing at the stain, “Do you think they had our house staked out? Like for a burglary? It’s kind of hard to imagine.”

“Maybe they weren’t looking for lucrative, maybe they were just roaming around, looking for something easy. They seem like people who might’ve had a lot of free roaming time. Maybe they tried this and that gate and they were all locked but yours wasn’t. The bigger problem was the keys dangling in the door. Maybe the door wasn’t even open—”

“No, it was open. I was just back. I knew I was running late, that you were going to be here any minute, and so I was a little frazzled, I was yanking stuff out of bags. I remember thinking if I could just get the frozen and cold stuff put away I could leave the rest until I got back. I keep replaying those first minutes. I see the two of them coming through the back door, but this isn’t even remembering. It’s only imagining, because I never actually did see them come in. My back was to the door. I was putting a couple of Leans into the freezer. I didn’t even know they were there until the woman coughed. The cough was the scariest moment in my life.

“And now I’m frightened she’ll be back with one of their friends. I don’t even know how to picture them. I think maybe they’re junkies? The police weren’t able to ID the guy. He just slipped away, like a spiky line melting into a nice, smooth anonymous one.”

“Do you think you should see someone professional?” Cate says. “Or do you think we should?” Cate would like to fold her arms around Neale, but the two of them have such a withering view of hugging there’s no way they could just start that sort of thing up now.