It’s the New York play that’s putting a thumb on the scale. Now is a time she really shouldn’t be away. She called Molly Cracciolo to let her know what had happened and how she needed another week or so at home, to find her footing. And at first, Molly was notionally sympathetic. She returned Cate’s call right away. Then how terrible, she told Cate, she and Lauren had their own experience along these lines, a recent robbery at their summer house in the Hamptons. Their entire collection of nineteenth-century French dolls, precious things, so articulated. Tiny necklaces of real diamonds and lapis lazuli. Lauren cried off and on the whole night they found out.

Fuck your French dolls! Cate screamed internally as she sat silent on her end of the call. But she does not want to lose this job and so she let Molly condescend to her—informing Cate that with the play only weeks off now, there was really no time for anyone involved to have a life, especially not a horrifying one. And so she is looking forward to seeing Cate on Tuesday. The change of scene will do her good.

The drawing of the kitchen suddenly pulls a bad lever and she’s through the trapdoor.

the terrible odor like a bad zoo, a roadside repulsion. neale, squirming under the fat man. “help me here, mama,” he says, and the woman with silver-toe cowboy boots skitters over and places a neat little kick to the side of neale’s head. a thin, dark red seep begins. there’s no time to consider anything, to weigh options. there is no options list.

This is how it goes. No matter how hard she tries, she can neither hold back her memory nor force it. What she gets are short clips like this one. Important chunks are still missing. She doesn’t know what she’s hiding from herself. It can’t be that she’s too frightened to look at these pieces. She’s actually weirdly unfrightened. But she’s another person now. She has been tested and, in a fumbling way, has passed. She has always lived on an easy island. Plenty of bananas, breezes over her hammock. The odds were against her ever having to save someone or, even less likely, kill someone. But she had to, and she did.