Amanda gestured to me, telling me to put the phone away, as we all moved to the dining room table, and while we ate—sandwiches and chips and some kind of insanely gorgeous and fresh fruit salad Karen seemed to have conjured out of thin air—Amanda finished telling her parents about Kyle’s appearance at our house. She spared them no detail, and both of her parents gasped repeatedly and shook their heads, a combination of indignation at Kyle’s craziness and fear for their daughter’s and grandson’s safety.

I added my own encounter with Kyle at Blake and Samantha’s house. The way he had broken in, the bottle he had menaced me with, his rush to get out of the house and avoid the police. They showed less concern for me than they did for Amanda and Henry—only to be expected—but when I finished, Bill attempted to sum it all up nicely for the table.

“Well,” he said, still chewing, a dab of mayonnaise on his chin, “good riddance to him. And you should get that alarm system. Listen to what I’m telling you. Innocent people, families—they’re vulnerable. You know, I’ve been thinking of getting a handgun—”

“Dad, not the gun again. Okay? Not that.”

My own feelings about those events we’d learned of on the news ran a more complicated gamut. I tried hard to reconcile my relief that Kyle would not be able to come back and menace Amanda or Henry or anybody else with the horror at the violent death of another human being. I certainly would have preferred that Kyle had surrendered, had a trial, and faced whatever music he needed to face without dying, but it was all beyond my control.

Could his death possibly signal a return to some semblance of normalcy? Did it mean Amanda and Henry could return home and have nothing to worry about?

While we ate, the news continued to play. A different reporter came on camera and told us that police were compiling a case against Kyle, one that included forensic evidence from the scene as well as the statements of friends and family who thought Kyle was growing too possessive and controlling of Jennifer in recent weeks.

“What a creep,” Bill said. Mercifully, he’d swallowed his food first.

I exchanged a look with Amanda. I saw the relief in her eyes. She said to me what I was thinking.

“Maybe this takes the heat off Blake. Maybe he can come back from wherever he is.”

“I hope so.”