At this point, Rosemary could no longer contain herself. She began to sob in great heaves, finally gathering up the strength to say these horrific words: “Danny shot and killed Rachel and one of the boys, and they found his car at the bottom of some quarry down in Akron, so the police think he drove it off the cliff and killed himself.”

Carolyn did not believe what she was hearing. It didn’t compute. Danny wasn’t violent. He loved Rachel and the boys. He didn’t even own a gun as far as she knew. Why would he drive his car off a cliff and kill himself?

“Oh, my God, Mom, this can’t be true. Who told you this? There has to be a mistake—this doesn’t make any sense. Danny doesn’t have a gun, and he never even yells at the kids. He and Rachel never fight, and if they were having trouble, Rachel definitely would have told me—”

“Honey, I’m sorry, but it’s true. I wish it weren’t, but it is!”

Carolyn’s heart was pounding so hard she thought it was going to leap right out of her chest. She started mechanically shaking her head “no,” and then she began shouting, over and over, “No, no, no, no, no!” She fell to her knees and began to sob uncontrollably. Throwing the phone down as if it were some vile creature, she dropped her head to the floor and screamed into the rug. She began to gasp for air and felt as if she were drowning; then a horrendous pain shot from the small of her back to the top of her head. Carolyn thought she was about to pass out. Suddenly she sat up, leaned back, and forced herself to take a deep breath. Now she felt better; she had it figured out. She crawled to the phone lying on the floor. It wasn’t true. Her mom had gotten it wrong. She probably saw something on TV, about a murder in Akron, and just thought it was about Rachel and Danny. That was it. Just one big mistake.

She felt relieved now that she was about to get to the bottom of things. She was almost smug when she said, “How do you know, Mom? Who told you?”