It was oddly bright surrounding the house, the sky vaster seeming, like the skies out west. It took Suzanne a minute to understand what was wrong. It was more than just the size of the house, it was that the trees were gone, their freshly sawn stumps left behind like amputated limbs. A woman with curly auburn hair sat on the curb in front of the yard, legs crossed, as if she were meditating.

“Did a tornado . . . ?” Suzanne said.

Nina’s smile tightened, her eyes a little wild as, apparently, she considered how to respond—but a man’s scream interrupted her. It was a lingering scream, a scream of obvious anguish. The man with the yellow bike helmet tumbled off his bike and onto the lawn.

“Is he hurt? Can you stop the car?” Grant said.

Nina stopped, but it was a slow stop.

The meditating woman sprang up, embracing the fallen biker. Grant wheeled the bike out of the road. “You all right? Need a hand?”

Nina motioned for him to get back in the car. “His mother died,” she whispered when he got back in. “They just got word.”

“How sad,” Suzanne said.

“Sad,” Nina said, bowing her head. “Very, very sad . . . but she was old.”

Nina pressed the automatic lock, sealing them in. “Off we go! To your dream house. I think it’s just around the corner,” she said, speeding away from the scene of the crime.

3

AUGUST 31—EVENING

Nick Cox sat on the couch in the media room, images from the television flickering in the dark. He thumbed through the channels with the remote. He had the biggest flat-screen TV on the market—not just HD, but ultra HD. It was like a movie theater. Better than a movie theater, really, because of the leather couch and the surround sound, and the absence of popcorn-eating, candy-wrapper-crumpling, soda-spilling strangers. He and Kaye usually spent their evenings here after she put Jakey to bed, but she got the yawns around ten. The leather was cold without her.

Rex, their German shepherd, nestled beside him, licking Nick’s hand constantly and thoroughly, dedicated to the cause. Ordinarily Nick did not care for dogs that licked, but Rex was one of a kind. He liked watching TV as much as Nick did—especially when dogs were on: he would wag and bark. He wasn’t much of a watchdog. He was more likely to lick a stranger’s hand than bite it. He slept in their bed, on Nick’s side, which made it hard to get in a comfortable position, but what was he going to do? Put him in the garage?