“It’s some crank, Stefan. It happens all the time. Different cranks with different messages.”

“Are these people, are they going to kill me?”

“Stefan, no, it’s only...” Something slapped hard against the passenger side of the car and Stefan screamed, crouching and curling his arms over his head. It was just Jep, still in his travel uniform of sport coat and khakis, his grin breaking apart as he saw what he’d done.

“I’m sorry. I just got here,” Jep said.

“Dad, oh, Dad, no, you just shocked me a little,” Stefan said as he rolled down his window and Jep reached through to cup the back of Stefan’s head in his hand. He kissed him on the forehead, and then stood back. The marchers shouted, “Say, say, say her name!”

“Awww, Dad,” Stefan breathed, barely a whisper. “I can’t get out.”

“I’ll be right here. You can do it,” Jep said.

Her claws clattering on the door, our dog, Molly, came rushing out the front door, then tried to hoist herself through the window to get to Stefan. He opened the car door to pull her in and stroked her gray muzzle, his tears spilling. “Molberry, you got old.” As she always has, Molly brought in calm along with a sifting of dusky gray fur.

I gave the top half of the driveway another try, but the car slipped and skidded on the mush. I couldn’t make it up the incline to the garage. We had to park right there.

Then they were on us.

3

When I was a young mother, I believed that if Stefan was ever in danger of choking to death and the Heimlich maneuver didn’t work, I would snatch up a paring knife and perform a tracheotomy to save him. I had no training. I had no idea how it was done. Did I think there’d be an online video? I was later to learn that I wasn’t the only woman crazy enough to have nurtured this kind of fantasy. The fury of mother love is so formidable that it seems to scoff at the limits of known reality and confer abilities befitting a god. Now, the arrow of my own future was aimed at a fight for Stefan’s future. What good would it have done Stefan—or Belinda, or the world?—for hard times to destroy him? No good. I hadn’t reckoned on how shattered Stefan was. I thought he would feel safe once he was home, as though he’d finally reached dry land. But he seemed instead to be drifting in dark water.

His first days were a revelation.