Steve hadn’t come home the night before. Sara had gone to bed after Detective Mendez had left. She had taken a sleeping pill and hadn’t stirred until the alarm had gone off at seven. When she opened her eyes, her husband was not in bed beside her—not that that was unusual.

Groggy from the pill, she dragged herself downstairs to put out breakfast for Wendy. There was no sign Steve had spent the night on the sofa, which he did more often than not lately—when he came home at all.

She had no idea where he went on the nights he didn’t come home. He usually claimed he had slept at the office, but Mendez had told her there had been no sign of Steve at his office that night.

Mendez had come by to check on her. He had been concerned to see the garage light on in the middle of the night. He had offered her sympathy and protection. Mendez, a relative stranger, had acted like a husband, while her husband had become nothing short of a stranger to her over this past year.

Wendy came downstairs for breakfast.

“Where’s Daddy?” she asked, pouring cereal in a bowl.

“I don’t know,” Sara said. “He didn’t come home last night.”

“Yes, he did. His car is in the driveway.”

But he wasn’t home. Wendy went through the house calling for him. Sara went into the garage to find no sign of him. When she went out to his car and saw blood on the driveway, she started to panic.

He wasn’t anywhere in the yard. He hadn’t fallen in the pool. He wasn’t dead in the street.

Sara called the sheriff’s office, then called another mother to take over car pool for the day. Distraught, Wendy had refused to go to school. She became convinced her father had been murdered.

A deputy had come to the house, looked at the car and the blood, and followed the same route through the yard and the garage and the house.

“Daddy’s dead, isn’t he?” Wendy said, crying, her arms wrapped tight around Sara’s waist. “He’s been kidnapped and killed! And now he’s dead!”

“No, sweetie,” Sara said. She wanted to say those things only happened on television, but she couldn’t. Wendy had seen a murder victim herself. Her best friend’s father was sitting in jail awaiting trial. One of her classmates had attacked her and stabbed another child.

“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation,” Sara said. “I’ll call the office. Maybe Don knows where Daddy is.”

While the deputy was in his car on the radio, Sara called Don Quinn to ask if he had heard from Steve.

Yes, he had. He had been Steve’s one phone call from jail. Steve had been arrested for assaulting a sheriff’s detective.