“You don’t even believe I got that call, do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“And if I didn’t get that call, then that e-mail, I must have made that up, too? Maybe when I was typing up that note on your typewriter?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Cynthia moved closer to me, raised her hand and pointed at me. “How can I stay here under this roof if I can’t be one hundred percent certain that I have your support? Your trust? I don’t need you looking at me sideways, second-guessing everything I do.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“So say it. Tell me right now. Look me in the eye and tell me you believe in me, that you know I haven’t had a hand in any of this.”

I swear I was going to say it. But my tenth-of-a-second hesitation was all it took for Cynthia to turn and walk away.

When I went into Grace’s room that night and found the lights all turned off, I expected to find her peering through her telescope, but she was already under the covers. She was wide awake.

“I’m surprised to find you here,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed and touching the side of her head.

Grace didn’t say anything.

“I thought you’d be looking for asteroids. Or did you already look?”

“I didn’t bother,” she said so softly I almost couldn’t hear.

“Are you not worried about asteroids anymore?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“So there aren’t any coming to hit the earth anytime soon?” I said, brightening. “Well, that has to be a good thing.”

“They might still be coming,” Grace said, turning her head into the pillow. “But it doesn’t matter.”

“What do you mean by that, honey?”

“Everyone around here is so sad all the time.”

“Oh, honey. I know. These have been a tough few weeks.”

“It didn’t matter whether an asteroid was coming or not. Aunt Tess still died. People die all the time from all sorts of things. They get hit by cars. They can drown. And sometimes people kill them.”

“I know.”

“And Mom’s acting like we’re not safe, and she hasn’t looked in my telescope even once. She thinks something’s coming to get us, but it’s not something from outer space.”

“We would never let anything happen to you,” I said. “Your mother and I love you very much.”

Grace said nothing.

“I still think it would be worth checking just once,” I said, shifting off the bed and kneeling in front of the telescope. “You mind if I have a look?” I asked.

“Knock yourself out,” Grace said. If the lights had been on, she might have seen me react to that.

“Okay,” I said, settling into position, but glancing first out the window to make sure the house wasn’t being watched. Then I put my eye up to the lens, took hold of the telescope.

I pointed it up into the night sky, saw stars fly past the end like a pan shot from Star Trek. “Let’s have a look here,” I said, and then the scope broke free of its stand, hit the floor, and rolled under Grace’s desk.

“I told you, Dad,” she said. “It’s just a piece of junk.”

I found Cynthia under the covers, too. They were pulled up right to her neck, as though she were cocooned. Her eyes were closed, although I had a feeling she was not asleep. She just didn’t want to engage in conversation.

I stripped down to my boxers, brushed my teeth, threw back the covers, and got into bed next to her. There was an old Harper’s next to the bed, and I flipped through the pages briefly, tried to read the Index, but couldn’t concentrate.

I reached over and turned the bedside lamp off. I settled in on my side, my back to Cynthia.

“I’m going to go lie with Grace,” Cynthia said.

“Sure,” I said into my pillow. Without looking at her, I said, “Cynthia, I love you. We love each other. What’s happening now, it’s tearing us up, tearing us apart. We need to come up with some plan, some way to take this on together.”

But she slipped out of bed without responding. A sliver of light from the hallway cut across the ceiling like a knife as she opened the door, then vanished as she closed it. Fine, I thought. I was too tired to fight, too tired to try to make up. Soon, I fell asleep.

In the morning, when I got up, Cynthia and Grace were gone.

I didn’t find it odd that Cynthia wasn’t sharing our bed with me when I woke up and saw that it was six-thirty. Even when we hadn’t fought, she’d sometimes fallen asleep on Grace’s bed and spent the entire night there. So I didn’t immediately trudge down the hall to check on them.

I got up, pulled on my jeans, wandered into the adjoining bathroom and splashed some water on my face. I had looked better. The stress of the last few weeks was taking its toll. There were dark circles under my eyes, and I think I’d actually lost a few pounds. That was something I could stand to do, but I would have preferred to do it following a plan that did not consist entirely of stress. There was red in the corner of my eyes, and I looked as though I could use a haircut.

The towel bar is right next to the window that looks down over the driveway. As I reached for a towel, there was something different about how the world beyond looked through the blinds. The cracks between the blinds are usually filled with white and silver, the colors of our two cars. But this time there was silver and asphalt.

I pried apart the blinds. Cynthia’s car was not in the driveway.

I muttered something along the lines of “What the fuck?”

Then I padded down the hall, barefoot and shirtless, and eased open the door to Grace’s room. Grace was never up this early, and I had every reason to expect to find her in bed.

The covers were turned back, the bed empty.

I could have just shouted out my wife’s name, or my daughter’s, standing up there at the top of the stairs, but it was still very early in the morning, and if there was a chance that there was still someone else in this house with me, and if that person was asleep, I didn’t want to wake her.

I popped my head into the study, found it empty, went down to the kitchen.

It looked as it had the night before. Everything cleaned up and put away. No one had had an early breakfast before departing.

I opened the door to the basement, and this time I felt comfortable shouting. “Cyn!” It was dumb, I know, given that her car was not in the driveway, but because that didn’t make sense, at some level I must have been operating on the theory that it had been stolen. “You down there?” I waited a beat, then, “Grace!”

When I opened the front door, the morning newspaper was there waiting for me.

It was hard, at that moment, not to shake the feeling that I was living out an episode from Cynthia’s life.

But this time, unlike that morning twenty-five years ago, there was a note.

It was folded and standing on its side, on the kitchen table, tucked in between the salt and pepper shakers. I reached for it, unfolded it. It was handwritten, and the writing was unmistakably Cynthia’s. It read:

Terry:

I’m going away.

I don’t know where, or for how long. I just know I can’t stay here another minute.

I don’t hate you. But when I see the doubt in your eyes, it tears me apart. I feel like I’m losing my mind, that no one believes me. I know Wedmore still doesn’t know what to think.

What’s going to happen next? Who will break in to our house? Who will be watching it from the street? Who will be next to die?

I don’t want it to be Grace. So I’m taking her with me. I figure you have the smarts to look after yourself. Who knows? Maybe with me out of the house, you’ll actually feel safer.

I want to look for my father, but I don’t have any idea where to start. I believe he’s alive. Maybe that’s what Mr. Abagnall discovered after he went to see Vince. I just don’t know.