“Calm down,” Brad told them. “It’s all right. There’s nothing scary.” He noticed that the drapes were all open. With the lights turned on throughout the house, it made the world outside the windows appear even darker. “You should have closed the drapes,” he said, doing so himself. Two little girls alone in a house watching TV with the lights on and the curtains open? If he saw this on the job, he’d question the parents about their negligence.

“How long ago did Mommy leave?” he asked.

Jillian shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“A long time ago!” Sue said.

“I’m sorry,” he told them. “We talked about this after the last time, and Mommy promised she wasn’t going to do this again.”

The girls looked at each other.

Brad’s stomach sank. “What?”

Another look.

“She has done this before today?”

“She—” Sue began.

“We’ll get in trouble!” Jillian told her.

“No you won’t,” he promised. “Tell me.”

Jillian looked at the floor. “She does it every day.”

Every day? The realization shocked him, and he was cut to the quick by a sharp sense of betrayal. That was not something he had expected, not after their discussions. He looked at the girls and thought of Patty leaving them to their own devices, suddenly aware that he did not know his wife the way he thought he did.

Not wanting to frighten the girls, but needing to know what had been going on in his home behind his back, he questioned them calmly, almost casually, without pressure, letting them know that he was just trying to find out where Mommy was so they could get her back. He learned that, each day this week, she had picked them up at school, then dropped them off at the house to do their homework, telling them she had to “go back to work,” and asking them not to tell Daddy. Before today, she had always returned within an hour or so, well before the sun started to go down.

Brad nodded, not letting them see how angry he actually was. Once again, he attempted to call his wife’s cell, doing it from the house phone, hoping she would see the number and think the girls were calling her, but, as before, it went directly to voicemail.

Where could she be? If his men hadn’t all been busy with real work, he would have been tempted to send a few out to find her. That would have scared her. And shamed her.

Although the best way to shame her would be to take the girls with him and hunt her down himself.

Where could she be? he wondered again. She was always talking about those new rich clients. Where had they bought their house? Hadn’t she said it was the big one by the golf course?

“Come on, girls,” he said. “We’re going for a ride.”

“Where?” Jillian asked suspiciously.