“You didn’t have to abandon your children!”

“Mommy didn’t abandon us,” Jillian said defensively.

“Go in your room,” Brad said. “Mommy and Daddy need to talk.”

With furtive looks toward each of their parents, the girls slunk out of the living room.

“I didn’t call you,” Patty said, “because I knew you were too busy to get away. And, all right, maybe I should have brought them with me. But some of these clients are temperamental and don’t like kids, and I didn’t want to lose the listing. It was just a quick trip to the office, ten minutes or so, and I made sure the girls were locked in here and wouldn’t open the door.”

“What if there was a fire? Or a gas leak? Would they have been able to get out or would I have come home to find their charred corpses?”

“That’s a terrible thing to say!”

“Things happen. And it’s our job as parents to make sure they don’t happen to our daughters. I thought you understood that.”

“I do. Of course, I do.”

But his faith in her had been shaken, and the anger and fear he felt was nearly overwhelming. He would never be able to put out of his mind what he had seen out by the control road, and while he usually wasn’t one to bring his work home with him, this was different, and the fact that Patty had been willing to leave Sue and Jillian all alone in order to secure a listing while such a psycho was on the loose left him feeling off balance, as though he’d just discovered after all these years that she was someone he didn’t really know.

She reached for his arm. “I made a mistake. A mistake I will never make again.”

He looked into her eyes. “But why did you make it in the first place? It’s not as if you’re a new mother and aren’t used to having children. This isn’t something that just came up. You’ve been taking care of Sue and Jillian for years. I always thought you were a good mother, but now—”

She pushed him away. “That’s not fair!”

“I’m sorry, but that’s—”

“I’m as good a mother as you are a father, and I spend more time with them than you do. Just because I left them for fifteen minutes—”

“I thought you said it was twenty.”

She glared at him. “Did you know that Natalie Bloom, that perfect mother, left Hannah in the car one time when she went in to the bank when Hannah was a baby? Because she forgot? In the summer? And do you know that Dottie’s daughter Livia answered the phone the other day when I called because Dottie had fallen asleep in front of her computer, and Livia was in the kitchen next to the phone because she was trying to make macaroni and cheese even though she’s too young to use the stove? Plus, I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that I don’t see that little boy down the block, what’s-his-name, wandering out into the street with his parents nowhere in sight. So before you start accusing me of being a bad parent, I suggest you look around and do a little comparison shopping.”