It is an April afternoon, the sun just sliding behind the hills to the west. The air is fresh but damp; rain is imminent—the first of the April showers. Alice is standing behind Ed as he lets the trooper into the house. Ed knows he is letting death in. By opening the door, death is invited in. He should have shut the door and barricaded it with his shoulder.

They don’t go into the living room this time; for some reason, Ed leads them into the kitchen, where he gestures for the trooper to sit at the table. He then holds a chair for Alice. She doesn’t look at him as she sits. She has barely spoken. The prescription bottle is on the counter, its label facing the wall.

Alice says nothing as Rossman gently breaks the news of finding Stacy in the pond.

“But I went to the pond. She wasn’t there.” Ed isn’t calling the man a liar, just mistaken. “How could I not have seen her?”

“She was under the water.”

Ed has to ask if it was an accident, and the need to ask that question reveals his deepest fear. “She fell in? How?”

“There will be an investigation.”

“But you think that it was”—Ed hits upon a word he can’t utter—“not an accident?”

“As I said, there will be an investigation.” Rossman has set his trooper’s hat on the empty chair at the table and he touches it gently on the crown. “I have to ask. Is there a note?” He asked this before, when Stacy was simply a missing person. This time, it is less of a question and more of a demand for a piece of evidence.

Ed remembers the warning on the bottle: Thoughts of suicide may increase when first taking this medication.

Alice stares at the trooper, great tears running unchecked down her cheeks, into the grooves that have appeared at the corners of her mouth; she makes no noise, makes no attempt to wipe them away. It is as if she has no idea that she is crying.

Trooper Rossman stands up and gathers his hat to his chest. “Mr. and Mrs. Parmalee, I am sorry for your loss.”

Ed sees the trooper out. He turns to take Alice in his arms and is met with a flat-handed slap.

“I never want you to touch me again.”

*   *   *

Buddy whizzes past Ed at a dead run, the lure of low-hanging squirrels too much for him. Suddenly, the dog finds himself perched on the lip of the dam. Daintily, he travels the edge like a gymnast on a balance beam, moving skillfully away from Ed, toward the opposite bank of the pond.