Holly grabbed her purse and went up to the third floor. A faint ache settled in her chest when she saw Zoe’s empty bed. For months, Holly had been looking forward to the end of June, when the kids would be out of school, and there’d be no more ballet rehearsals or climate change group projects for Zoe, no more soccer practice or debate meets for Flynn, no more field trip chaperoning or bake sale shifts for her, and their overplanned lives could relax into the kind of aimless summers she’d enjoyed as a kid in the mountains. Sleeping on the back porch, climbing trees barefoot, nothing but marmalade sandwiches and her imagination to fuel her. But at the last minute, Zoe decided she just had to join her friends at Camp Spruce in Maine for six action-packed weeks of Zumba and organic gardening, aquaplaning and riflery with the other nine-year-olds. She’d been gone a week already, and in just a few hours, Flynn would be gone on his fishing trip with three boys from the Harvard-Westlake Upper School. Holly and Ted would be all alone, rattling around this huge house just the two of them and their staff of thirty. With their children around them, they did well together, but sometimes it seemed as if they were the furniture the kids jumped on. Left to their own devices, there might be nothing to do but sag in empty rooms. Holly picked the blanket off the floor in Flynn’s room—her son slept as wildly as his dad did—and covered his lanky, spread-eagled form. She tucked him in and mussed his hair a bit, hoping he would wake so she could give the adolescent stink of him a kiss. But all he did was roll over.

Downstairs in the garage, Erin and James were waiting.

“Hi, James,” Holly said.

“Good morning,” he said, opening the back door of the Tesla for her, the window down and the air conditioner already running, just like Ilya would’ve done if he hadn’t gone home to Sochi for the month. One was an African American former football player and the other was a scrawny Russian Jew, and it didn’t matter which one of them was driving, that’s how well they knew the family’s preferences and routines. Holly suddenly felt a little sleepy and thought maybe she’d shut her eyes on the ride to Stabler Studios.