“Are there bleachers inside?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay. I’ll come back.”

Anne was cold, but two hours of chlorinated air and the deafening echoes of cheering inside an indoor pool would drive her batshit.

“I’ll come back at eight thirty—”

“Fine.” Dan slammed the car door shut, which Anne read as haste with the icy rain coming down but was really conflicted teenage moodiness—he wanted her there and he didn’t want her there, and he was annoyed at having both feelings.

Anne burrowed into the cold of her car, the headlights of the Zephyr illuminating a turned-over goalpost on a wintered soccer field. She picked up the Mapsco and found herself. East Dallas, the undiscovered country. There was shopping on Skillman—Maybe a Tom Thumb to stroll the aisles and warm up in. And then she remembered: Lake Highlands. Their house is just off Audelia and Royal. She found Credo Drive in the street index.

Sleet stippled the hood of the Zephyr but did not stick to the road. Anne drove toward the Raleigh house expecting some part of her would win the argument for turning away. Judge Sam never said we couldn’t. Just a quick drive by. She knew the address from the trial, 9324 Credo Drive, and in minutes she was on their block, the look and layout of the houses here familiar from the nightly news. Credo Drive hooked and veered left, the roads in this part of town all curved like this, partly by design and partly inflected by the various creeks that fed White Rock Lake. Anne crawled along and then came to a stop two doors down. The house was a bleached oatmeal color, with a large sycamore swiping an umber roof. The windows were shaded, no light on the porch. The house was . . . inoffensive . . . and in the darkness could have been mistaken for a million other Dallas ranch houses. There were few cars on the block, and Anne was a little surprised not to find any police stationed there, but then again, it was too late, the house just a remnant. Creepy quiet though. She nudged the accelerator and drove around the bend until Credo Drive dead-ended into an unmarked road across from railroad tracks. She looked both ways through a sequence of sodium streetlights—no cars, no people, just more road. She felt a little nervous—If I get caught out here, would that be grounds for a mistrial? Standing Raleigh’s suicide attempt and the long delay, now going on two months, counting the holidays, had probably caused that already. But it was those same jitters that spurred her to make a hard right and turn up the alleyway behind Credo Drive.