Instead, she had come home, taken some clothes and her laptop, told him privately that she’d decided to live with her “new family” and had left him to explain it to the girls. In the days since, he had called her sister and parents in Texas, but she’d made no effort to contact them, and they were even more in the dark than he was. As far as he could tell from his not-so-subtle efforts to keep track of her, she was still showing up at the real estate office, still doing her job, and though she never answered her phone when he called, he had a feeling that was simply because she chose not to pick up when she saw his number. He’d confided in no one else other than her family, had given the people at work only the barest outlines of what was going on, and was keeping the girls in a cocoon spun from half-truths and omissions.

Jillian and Sue got in the front seat of the car.

“So what should we have for dinner tonight?” he asked, feigning a positivity he did not feel.

“Is Mommy coming home?” Sue inquired.

“Probably not,” he told her. “But I’ll try to call her and find out.”

The girls suddenly perked up.

“Can we talk to her?” Jillian asked.

“Sure, if she’s not too busy.”

Jillian slumped back down in her seat. “That’s a no.”

He didn’t know how to respond to that. She was right, but he wanted both of them to maintain as much of their optimism as possible. They were going to need it.

He looked over at his daughters. “What did you do in school today?”

“We had an active shooter drill,” Jillian said.

“What?”

“We had to sit quietly in our classroom under our desks while the teacher locked the door.”

He had heard nothing about this. While he supposed the school had the right to conduct its own drills, with something so potentially frightening to kids, the administration should have given parents a heads up so they could talk to their children about it. More importantly, as the town’s chief law enforcement officer, he should have been informed, because in any real world scenario, he would be calling the shots during the response, and if he and his team were to operate effectively, they would need to know the school’s protocols.

“It only lasted about five minutes.”

He nodded, not wanting them to see how upset he was. Tomorrow, he was going to have to have a little talk with the school’s principal and straighten her out. To put the fear of God in her, he’d fill her in on Nash Weems’ news that gun shops and bullet companies were popping up all over town and let her know that the prospect of an active shooter probably wasn’t as remote as the district might think it was.