The door opened and Ethan ran in. I scooped him up in my arms and held on to him tight, patted the back of his head.

“You okay?” I asked. He nodded. “They were nice to you?”

“I had an ice cream. A lady wanted to get me another but Mom would be mad if I had two.”

“We never really had any lunch,” I said.

“Where’s Mommy?” Ethan asked, but not with any sense of worry.

“We’re going home now,” I said.

“Is she home?”

I glanced at Duckworth, who had followed Ethan into the room. There was nothing in his expression.

“Let’s just go home,” I said. “And then maybe we’ll see Nana and Poppa.”

Still holding Ethan, I said to Duckworth, my voice low, “What do we do now?”

He breathed in and then exhaled, his belly going in and out. “You head home. First thing, you send me a picture. If you hear anything, you get in touch with me.” He had already given me his card. “And we’ll call if there are any developments.”

“Of course.”

“Maybe start making up a list, anyone your wife might have called, anyone she might have gotten in touch with.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Tell me again how you bought your tickets for today?”

“I told you. From the website.”

“You ordered them?”

“Jan did,” I said.

“So it wasn’t actually you who sat down at the computer to do it, it was your wife.”

I didn’t understand the point of this. “That’s what I just said.”

Duckworth seemed to be mulling this over.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.

“Only two tickets were bought online,” he said. “One adult ticket, one child.”

I blinked. “Well, that doesn’t make much sense. There must be some mistake. She was in the park. They wouldn’t have let her in the gate without a ticket. There’s been some kind of mix-up.”

“And I’m asking them to look into that. But if it turns out only one adult ticket was purchased, does that figure?”

It didn’t. But if that was what had happened, I could think of at least one possible explanation.

“Maybe Jan made a mistake,” I offered. “Sometimes, ordering online, it’s easy to do that. I was booking a hotel online once, and the website froze up for a second, and when I got the confirmation it said I’d booked two rooms when I only wanted one.”

Duckworth’s head went up and down slowly. “That’s a possibility.”

The only problem with my theory was that, on the way into Five Mountains, Jan had taken out of her purse all our tickets. She had handed me mine and one for Ethan, and made a point of keeping one for herself so she could get into the park after she went back to the car for her backpack.

She hadn’t mentioned any ticket problem when she’d found us inside the gate.

I was about to mention this to Duckworth, but stopped myself, because I suddenly had another theory that was too upsetting to discuss aloud, certainly not in front of Ethan, who had wrapped his arms around my neck.

Maybe Jan never bought a ticket because she was thinking she might not be around to use it. Maybe that piece of paper she was flashing wasn’t a ticket after all.

No point buying a ticket if you know you’re going to kill yourself.

But could Jan have seriously thought that if she killed herself, we’d head off to Five Mountains to celebrate?

“Something?” Duckworth said.

“No,” I said. “I just, I don’t know what to say. I really need to get Ethan home and get that picture to you.”

“Absolutely,” he said and moved aside to let me leave.

Leaving Five Mountains was a surreal experience.

Once I had Ethan in his stroller, we exited the offices and were back in the park, not far from the main gate. We were surrounded by the sounds of children and adults laughing. Balloons bobbed and, when the children holding them loosened their grips on the strings, soared skyward. Upbeat music blared from food stands and gift shops. Above us, roller-coaster passengers screamed with terrified delight.

Fun and pandemonium everywhere we looked.

I held on tight to the stroller handles and kept on pushing. We went past a couple of Promise Falls uniformed cops, but they were doing more ambling than searching. Perhaps there was no place else to look.

At least not here.

Ethan swung around and tried to eye me from his stroller seat. “Is Mommy home?” It had to be the fifth time he’d asked.

I didn’t answer. First of all, I didn’t have an answer to his question. And second, I did not have high hopes. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something very bad had happened to Jan. That Jan had done something very bad to herself.

Don’t let it be true.

Once we got to the car, I placed Ethan in his seat, buckled him in, dumped his toys within reach. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Can I have a sandwich?”

“A sandwich?”

“Mom put sandwiches in her backpack.”

There was no backpack. Not now.

“We’ll get something to eat when we get home,” I said. “Just hang in there. It won’t take long.”

“Where’s Batman?”

“What?”

Ethan was sorting through his action figures. Spider-Man, Robin, Joker, Wolverine. A melding of the Marvel and DC universes. “Batman!”

“I’m sure he’s there,” I said.

“He’s gone!”

I searched around his safety seat and down in the crevices of the car upholstery.

“Maybe it fell out,” Ethan said.

“Fell out where?” I asked.

He just looked at me, like I was supposed to know.

I searched under the front seats, thinking Batman could have fallen and gotten tucked under there.

Ethan was crying.

“Damn it, Ethan!” I shouted. “You think we don’t have enough to worry about right now?”

I reached my hand an inch farther and got hold of something. A tiny leg. I pulled out Batman and handed it to Ethan, who took the Caped Crusader happily into his hands, then tossed it onto the seat next to him to play with something else.

There was a huge traffic backup getting out of Five Mountains. Everyone was being stopped by the police on their way out, a cop peering inside, doing a walk-around like it was a border crossing. It took us twenty minutes to reach the exit, and I powered down my window when the cop leaned forward to talk to me.

“Excuse me, sir, we’re just doing a check of cars as they leave. Just take a moment.” No explanation offered.

“I’m the guy,” I said.

“I’m sorry?”

“My wife is the one you’re looking for. Jan Harwood. I have to get home so I can email a photo of her to Detective Duckworth.”

He nodded and waved us on.

From the back seat, Ethan said, “The police lady told me a joke.”

“What?”

“She said you would like it because you’re a reporter.”

“Okay, what is it?”

“What’s black and white and red all over?”

“I give up,” I said.

“A newspaper,” Ethan said and cackled. He waited a beat, and said, “I don’t get it.” Another pause. “Is Mom making dinner?”

As we came in the door Ethan shouted, “Mom!”

I was about to join in and shout out Jan’s name, but I decided to wait and see whether Ethan got a reply.

“Mom?” he yelled a second time.

“I don’t think she’s home,” I said. “You go in and watch some TV and I’ll just make sure.”

He trundled off obediently to the family room while I did a quick search of the house. I ran up to our bedroom, checked the bathroom, Ethan’s bedroom. Then I was back to the main floor and down the steps into our unfinished basement. It didn’t take more than a second to realize she wasn’t there. The only place left to check was the garage.

There was a connecting door between the kitchen and the garage, and as I put my hand on it I hesitated.

Jan’s Jetta had been in the driveway when we’d pulled in. So her car was not in the garage.

So at least she couldn’t have-

Open the damn door, I told myself. I turned the knob and stepped into the one-car garage. It was as messy and disorganized as always.