Grace, still a bit dumbstruck by my shameless use of a bad word, shook her head no. “I think she’d freak out.”

That was probably true, but I didn’t want to say so. “Well, maybe you should talk to her about it sometime, when everyone’s having a good day.”

“Today’s going to be good,” Grace said. “I didn’t see any asteroids last night, so we should be okay at least until tonight.”

“Good to know.”

“You should probably stop walking with me now,” Grace said. Up ahead, I saw some schoolkids about her age, maybe even her friends. More kids were funneling onto our street from side streets. The school was visible three blocks up.

“We’re getting close,” Grace said. “You can watch me from here.”

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You start pulling ahead of me. I’ll do my old man walk. Like Tim Conway.”

“Who?”

I started shuffling, and Grace giggled. “Bye, Dad,” she said, and started pouring on the speed. I kept my eyes on her as I took my tiny steps, being overtaken by other children walking and on bikes and skateboards and inline skates.

She didn’t glance back. She was running to catch up with friends, shouting, “Wait up!” I slipped my hands into my pockets, thought about getting back to the house and having a few private moments with Cynthia.

That was when the brown car drove past.

It was an older American model, fairly generic, an Impala I think, a bit of rust around the wheel wells. Windows tinted, but it was one of those cheap tint jobs, the glass covered with air bubbles, like the car had measles or something.

I stood and watched as it headed down the street, down to the last corner before the school, where Grace was chattering away with two of her friends.

The car stopped at the corner, a few yards away from Grace, and my heart was in my mouth for a moment.

And then one of the brown car’s rear taillights started to flash, the car turned right and disappeared down the street.

Grace and her friends, aided by a crossing guard in a bright orange vest and wielding a huge stop sign, made it across the street and onto school property. To my amazement, she looked back and waved at me. I raised my hand in return.

So okay, there was a brown car. But no man had jumped out of it and run after our daughter. No man had jumped out and run after anyone else’s kid, either. If the driver happened to be some crazed serial killer-as opposed to a perfectly sane serial killer-he wasn’t up to any serial killing this morning.

It appeared to be some guy going to work.

I stood there another moment, watched as Grace was swallowed up by a throng of fellow students, and felt a sadness wash over me. In Cynthia’s world, everyone was plotting to take away your loved ones.

Maybe, if I hadn’t been thinking that way, I’d have had a bit more of a spring in my step as I walked back in the direction of home. But as I approached our house, I tried to shake off my gloominess, to put myself into a better frame of mind. My wife, after all, was waiting for me, very likely under the covers.

So I sprinted the remainder of the last block home, walked briskly up the driveway, and as I came through the front door I called out, “I’m baaaaaack.”

There was no response.

I thought that had to mean Cynthia was already in bed, waiting for me to come upstairs, but as I hit the base of the stairs I heard a voice from the kitchen.

“In here,” Cynthia said. Her voice was subdued.

I stood in the doorway. She was sitting at the kitchen table, the phone in front of her. Her face seemed drained of color.

“What?” I asked.

“There was a call,” Cynthia said quietly.

“Who from?”

“He didn’t say who he was.”

“Well, what did he want?”

“All he said was he had a message.”

“What kind of message?”

“He said they forgive me.”

“What?”

“My family. He said they forgive me for what I did.”

I sat down next to Cynthia at the kitchen table. I put one hand over hers and could feel her shaking. “Okay,” I said, “just try to remember what he said exactly.”

“I told you,” she said, clipping her words. She bit into her upper lip, then, “He said-okay, wait a minute.” She pulled herself together. “The phone rang and I said hello, and he said, ‘Is this Cynthia Bigge?’ Which threw me, calling me by that name, but I said it was. And he said, I couldn’t believe he said this, he said, ‘Your family, they forgive you.’” She paused. “‘For what you did.’

“I didn’t know what to say. I think I just asked him who he was, what he was talking about.”

“Then what did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything else. He just hung up.” A solitary tear ran down Cynthia’s cheek as she looked into my face. “Why would he say something like that? What does he mean, they forgive me?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s probably some nut. Some nut who saw the show.”

“But why would a person call and say something like that? What would the point be?”

I pulled the phone over closer to me. It was the only high-tech one we had in the house, with a small caller-ID display screen.

“Why would he say my family forgives me? What does my family think I did? I don’t understand. And if they think I did something to them, then how can they even tell me they forgive me? It doesn’t make any sense, Terry.”

“I know. It’s crazy.” My eyes were on the phone. “Did you see where the call was coming from?”

“I looked and it didn’t say, and then when he hung up I tried to check the number.”

I pressed the button that displayed the call history. There was no record of a call in the last few minutes.

“It’s not showing anything,” I said.

Cynthia sniffed, wiped the tear from her cheek, and leaned over the phone. “I must have…what did I do? When I went to check where the call came from, I pressed this button to save it.”

“That’s how you delete it,” I said.

“What?”

“You deleted the last call from the history,” I said.

“Oh shit,” Cynthia said. “I was so flustered, I was upset, I just didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Sure,” I said. “So, this man, what did he sound like?”

Cynthia wasn’t listening to my question. She had a vacant look on her face. “I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I deleted the number. But nothing showed up on the screen anyway. You know when it says it’s an unknown number?”

“Okay, let’s not worry about that anymore. But the man, what did he sound like?”

Cynthia half raised her hands in a gesture of futility. “It was just a man. He was talking kind of low, like maybe he was trying to disguise it, you know. But there wasn’t really anything.” She paused, then her eyes flashed with an idea. “Maybe we should call the phone company. They might have a record of the call, maybe they’d even have a recording of it.”

“They don’t keep recordings of everybody’s phone calls,” I said, “no matter what some people may think. And what are we going to tell them? It was one isolated call, from a nut who probably saw the show. He didn’t threaten you, he didn’t even use obscene language.”

I slipped an arm around Cynthia’s shoulder. “Just…don’t worry about it. Too many people know about what happened to you. It can make you a target. You know what we should look into?”

“What?”

“An unlisted number. We could get an unlisted number, then we wouldn’t get calls like this.”

Cynthia shook her head. “No, we’re not doing that.”

“I don’t think it costs that much more, and besides-”

“No, we’re not doing it.”

“Why not?”

She swallowed. “Because when they are ready to call, when my family finally decides to get in touch, they have to be able to reach me.”

I had a free period after lunch, so I slipped out of the school, drove across town to Pamela’s, and went inside the store with four takeout cups of coffee.