Sebastian’s eyes seemed to twinkle.

“That’s the trouble with you newspaper types,” he said. “You’re so incredibly cynical.”

“Why the hell do you keep staring at that picture?” Horace Richler asked his wife.

Gretchen was sitting on the front step of their Lincoln Avenue home, forearms resting on her knees, holding the picture David Harwood had left with them of his wife in both hands. It was a printout on regular paper, and if she held it with only one hand the breeze would catch it and flip it over.

Horace noticed that on the step next to his wife was the framed photo of their daughter, Jan.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I’m just thinking,” she said.

“You want a coffee or anything? There’s still some left in the pot.”

Gretchen said nothing. She looked up from the picture and stared out at the street. She could see them. The two little girls playing in the front yard. Running around in circles, laughing one minute, arguing the next.

Then Horace, running out the front door, getting into his car, throwing it into reverse and hitting the gas.

“Hey. Coffee?”

Gretchen craned her neck around. She couldn’t move it all that far. She noticed it most when she was trying to back out of a spot at the grocery store. Couldn’t turn around to see where she was going, had to rely on the mirrors. Always came out real slow, figured if she did hit something, she’d hear it, could step on the brakes right away.

“I don’t want anything, love, thanks,” she said.

“What’s going on inside your head?”

When Gretchen didn’t reply, Horace came down the steps and plunked himself down, not without some discomfort. Both his knees hurt like the devil. Once he was settled, he leaned his shoulder into his wife’s.

He said, “I had a dream about Bradley last night. That Afghanistan never happened. That he never went over there, there never was any goddamn Taliban, that none of that ever even existed. I was dreaming that I was sitting right here, and you were sitting next to me the way you are right now, and I looked down the street that way and I saw him walking up the road in his uniform.”

A tear ran down Gretchen’s cheek.

“And he had Jan with him,” Horace said, his voice breaking. “She was still a little girl, and she was holding on to her big brother’s hand, and the two of them were coming home. Together.”

Gretchen held on to the photo with one hand and dug a tissue out of her sleeve with the other. She put it to her eye.

“And then I realized that they weren’t really alive,” Horace said. “I realized that you and I, we were dead. That Lincoln Avenue was heaven.”

Gretchen sniffed, blew her nose, dabbed her eyes.

“Sorry,” Horace said. “I shouldn’t have told you that. It was that fella coming here, I think that’s what triggered it. He shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have done that, bringing his troubles into our house when we got enough of our own. I don’t know what the hell he was thinking, barging in here with a cockamamy, bullshit story like that.”

Gretchen sniffed again, dabbed again, then wadded the tissue up into a ball.

Horace picked up the photo of his daughter. His body seemed to crumple around it.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Gretchen said for probably the thousandth time in all these years.

Horace didn’t respond.

Gretchen got both hands again on the printout picture of Jan Harwood and stared at it.

Horace said, “The idea that somebody would go around using our daughter’s name and birth certificate, it just… how can you steal a little girl’s identity?”

“It happens,” Gretchen said quietly. “It happens all the time. I saw, on TV, how someone went through a cemetery, found graves where they could tell from the dates that it was a child that died, and they’d use that name to make up a whole new person.”

“Some people,” Horace said under his breath. He glanced over at the picture his wife couldn’t stop staring at. “She’s pretty.”

“Yes.”

“It must be hard on that fella, not knowing what’s happened to her. Not knowing if she’s dead or alive. That has to be bad, the not knowing.”

“At least with not knowing, there’s always hope,” Gretchen said, not taking her eyes off the picture. “I haven’t stopped looking at this all day. I knew, when he first showed it to me last night…”

“You seemed kind of upset,” Horace said. “You went upstairs.”

Gretchen was struggling to say something. “Horace…”

He slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “It’s okay,” he said.

“Horace, look at the picture.”

“I’ve seen the picture.”

“Look, look right here.” She pointed.

“Hang on,” he said, then sighed and took his arm from around her shoulders. He reached into the front pocket of his shirt, where he kept a pair of small wire-rimmed reading glasses. He opened them up, noticed they were smudged and dirty, but slipped the arms over his ears just the same.

“Where do you want me to look?”

“Right here.”

“I don’t know what you’re looking at.”

“Here.”

He grasped the picture with both hands. He studied it for a moment, and then his face began to fall.

“I’ll be goddamned,” he said.

Once Welland had the limo turned around and we were well on our way, I said to Elmont Sebastian, “Suppose, just for a moment, that I did find out who emailed me, and I told you who she was.”

His eyebrows went up half an inch.

“What would you do to her?” I asked.

Sebastian said, “I would have a word with her.”

“A word.”

“I would tell her that she was lucky that no harm had been done, and I would explain to her that it’s not a good thing to be disloyal to those you work for.”

“Assuming she works for you,” I said.

“Or Mr. Reeves. It’s not a good thing to rat out your friends or employers.”

“But it’s okay if I rat her out.”

Sebastian looked at me and smiled.

As we approached Ted’s, I sensed the car slowing, but then it sped up. “You passed it,” I said to Welland.

“Thanks for that,” Welland said. “I never would have known.”

I glanced at Sebastian. “What’s going on?”

He didn’t seem to know any more than I did. “Welland?” he said.

His driver said, “Didn’t look safe to pull in, sir.”

“What did you see?”

“Looked like someone was waiting for Mr. Harwood,” Welland said.

Someone was waiting for me at Ted’s?

“Pull over up ahead, once we get round that bend,” Sebastian said.

The car maintained its pace for another few seconds, then Welland steered it over onto the gravel shoulder. Once the car was fully stopped, Sebastian said to me, “Always a pleasure, David.”

These guys were pretty consistent at not returning me to my pickup point.

As I opened the door Sebastian said, “I hope you’ll give due consideration to everything I’ve said.”

I got out and started walking back to Ted’s without closing the door. It wouldn’t have killed Sebastian to lean over and deal with it, but when I glanced back I saw Welland getting out of the driver’s seat, going around to the other side. I expected him to slam the door, but he leaned in briefly, came back out with what appeared to be a Mars bar wrapper in his hand, then slammed the door shut. He glanced my way, and for a second time, made his fingers into a gun and pointed at me.

This time, he fired twice.

As I walked along the shoulder my cell phone rang. It was my mother.

“It’s getting bad here,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

“TV trucks and reporters. Everyone wants to talk to you, and if they can’t get you, they want to talk to me or your father. Or they want to get a picture of Ethan.”

“God, Mom, what’s tipped everyone off?”

“I’ve been checking the websites, first your paper’s, then others. It’s starting to spread. The headlines say things like ‘Reporter Questioned in Wife’s Disappearance’ and ‘Reporter Tells Police: I Didn’t Kill My Wife.’ But like I said, it’s not just your paper. It’s on the TV news websites, and I heard something on the radio, and, David, it’s just terrible. I can’t believe the things they’re saying about you, well, not actually about you, but it’s all the innuendo and suggestions and-”