Lindy’s seat was empty. She was in her room. She was grounded for the rest of her life. That and whatever the police planned to do to her for lying to them. For a while she’d stomped around upstairs, screaming and making the dining room chandelier shake, but she was quiet now. She’d probably worn herself out and had fallen asleep, exhausted, like she used to when she was little.

Jillian, shivering and rattled looking, had come by the house earlier that day. Kaye had been so glad to see her—she’d missed her!—but Jillian wouldn’t look her in the eye. She told Kaye the whole story, about skipping school, and how Mark let go of the tire swing too soon. Her uncle Terrance had spent the morning napping, not kidnapping. She and Mark had already told the police what had happened. Kaye, arguably more embarrassed than angry, dragged Lindy down to the police station where Lindy, cornered, told them she’d made the whole thing up. Kaye had done the wrong thing, turning Terrance in to the police. It had felt like the right thing at the time, but it had been wrong.

She tried to get the dinner conversation going. “How’s school going, Adam? I hear you’re back at school.” “Anyone need salt?”—but her attempts fizzled. Nick poked at his meat tentatively, like maybe it wasn’t dead yet.

Kaye, tears springing up in her eyes, loaded her plate and the kids’ plates up her arm—she’d not been a waitress all those summers for nothing—and dumped them in the kitchen sink, hard. One plate split neatly down the middle. It made her feel like throwing them, really slamming them at the walls and windows, but it might scare little Adam. Instead she stuffed them in the trash can, plates, food, and all, pulling out a few good chunks of meat for Rex. She cleared the rest of the table, singing, “Don’t get up, don’t get up,” as she removed forks and knives and water glasses, wineglasses and the butter and the sour cream and the extra potatoes and the salad bowl and the salt and pepper and threw them all into the trash. Then she tossed the broiling pan and the cocktail sauce jar in the trash too. The kitchen looked as good as it did after Carmen cleaned it.

Kaye went back out to the dining room, smiling a brittle smile. “He’s free now, all charges dropped, so no harm done, right?”

The little boys and Nick looked at her, expressions blank.