Evan’s car was still in the driveway this morning when I left with Sonia. He’d stayed home, I assumed, to console his wife—not that I believe Evan capable of much consoling. Possibly, he stayed to watch her until the house could be suicide-proofed or Olivia could be doped up enough so she wouldn’t be tempted to try anything.

I park, and send Sonia into the house as soon as the gurney emerges on the Kings’ front porch. “Go to the den and watch something with your brothers, okay?”

“Why?”

Why? Because Olivia King’s body is on that stretcher. “Because I said so, baby girl. Now.”

Olivia’s body is on the stretcher, her face uncovered and serene. Her left arm dangles down beneath the white sheet.

Or what’s left of her arm.

The fingers are five charred stubs, black with necrotic tissue that crawls up her palm to her wrist, a wrist now the size of a baby’s. I think even one of Sonia’s infant bracelets would hang loosely on it, clattering against the exposed bone. An acrid odor fills the air, and stray wisps of smoke billow out their front door.

Oh god.

Our own screen door bangs open, and Patrick catches me in time, just as my knees buckle. “It’s okay. Don’t look, Jean. Don’t look at it.”

It. Always It.

Inside, he pours me a drink and tells me the kids are watching a video. “No television today. Not after—” He pauses. “I’ll tell you about that later. Drink this.”

“What happened to her?” My own voice is thin and stringlike. I take a sip of scotch, and it burns.

Patrick pours himself a glass of the same—not his usual afternoon beer—and steadies himself against the kitchen counter. “Evan said he’d thought of everything. Locked up all the knives, anything sharp. Took away whatever she might use as a rope, even shut off the electricity.”

“Good thinking,” I say. But he forgot something, didn’t he?

“After lunch, Olivia said she was going to lie down for a while. So he stripped the bed and took everything out of the bedroom that she might, you know, use. Oh Jesus, Jean. I can’t.” He swallows a long draw of scotch. “Okay. She had this little recorder, see? One of those Dictaphone things, maybe from when she used to work as a secretary—I don’t know. Evan heard her talking when he went to check on her, but she didn’t say much, only a few words about Julia. Twenty or so words in all. Then she went quiet, and he figured she was sleeping. You don’t want to hear the rest, Jean. I swear you don’t.”

“I have to.”