“I said he went to stay with a friend for a couple of days,” he tells me, then glances over at the kids and their forest of plastic pieces. “Sam, Leo, watch your sister. Your mom and I are going outside for a few minutes.”

“We are?” I say.

“We are. Here, Jean.” He hands me the bottle of beer he’s just popped the cap off of. “You might need this.”

Jean. Not “babe” or “hon,” but “Jean.” Patrick’s in business mode. Or he’s pissed off, which makes sense. In the past twenty-four hours, I’ve committed two crimes. Maybe more, if I throw in tampering with the mail.

“Come on.” He opens the back door and leads me as far from the house as possible. “Got anything you want to tell me?”

I swallow, not sure which is worse—stealing the project envelope and reading it, or spending half of the afternoon with Lorenzo. Or, I think, being two and a half months pregnant. Don’t forget that one, Jean.

He brushes a stray lock of hair from his forehead. “Look. I know you were in my office.”

“I wanted to FaceTime my father,” I lie.

“Nice try, babe, but no. I checked the call log on the kitchen phone.”

Well. If nothing else, we’re back to “babe.”

He sits down on one side of the bench, pulling me to join him. I back away. “I’m not going to bite, you know,” he says.

Automatically, my right hand moves up to my collar, and I tug the material closer around my neck. Just in case I’ve brought home any souvenirs from the crab shack. “Okay,” I say, and sit next to him.

“I saw a man executed once,” he says, staring straight ahead into the thicket of azaleas now past their late-spring flush of color. “It was last September. September first, actually. At two twenty-three in the afternoon.”

I don’t know what to say, so I ask the first question that pops into mind. “You remember the time? The exact time?”

“Yeah. I never saw a man—or woman—die before that. Hell, I never saw an animal die. Kinda sticks in your brain, you know? Anyway, he was from my office. One of the junior scientists, worked on liaisons between the administration and the other organizations, National Science Foundation, Centers for Disease Control, NIMH, stuff like that. He was always throwing out those acronyms, Jimbo was. His name was Jim Borden, but we all called him Jimbo. Good guy. Had a young wife and a girl about Sonia’s age, maybe a year younger. He liked to tell jokes. That’s what I remember about him. Isn’t that funny, Jean?”

It isn’t, but I say it is.