Josie stared at her for a moment. “I’m scared of losing me, too.”

Alex sat up and tucked Josie’s hair behind her ear. “Let’s get out of here,” she suggested.

Josie froze. “I don’t want to go out.”

“Sweetheart, it would be good for you. It’s like physical therapy, but for the brain. Go through the motions, the pattern of your everyday life, and eventually you remember how to do it naturally.”

“You don’t understand…”

“If you don’t try, Jo,” she said, “then that means he wins.”

Josie’s head snapped up. Alex didn’t have to tell her who he was. “Did you guess?” Alex heard herself asking.

“Guess what?”

“That he might do this?”

“Mom, I don’t want to-”

“I keep thinking about him as a little boy,” Alex said.

Josie shook her head. “That was a really long time ago,” she murmured. “People change.”

“I know. But sometimes I can still see him handing you that rifle-”

“We were little,” Josie interrupted, her eyes filling with tears. “We were stupid.” She pushed back the covers, in a sudden hurry. “I thought you wanted to go somewhere.”

Alex looked at her. A lawyer would press the point. A mother, though, might not.

Minutes later, Josie was sitting in the passenger seat of the car beside Alex. She buckled the seat belt, then unlatched it, then secured it again. Alex watched her tug on the belt to make sure it would lock up.

She pointed out the obvious as they drove-that the first daffodils had pushed their brave heads through the snow on the median strip of Main Street; that the Sterling College crew team was training on the Connecticut River, the bows of their boats breaking through the residual ice. That the temperature gauge in the car said it was more than fifty degrees. Alex intentionally took the long route-the one that did not go past the school. Only once did Josie’s head turn to look at the scenery, and that was when they passed the police station.

Alex pulled into a parking spot in front of the diner. The street was filled with lunchtime shoppers and busy pedestrians, carrying boxes to be mailed and talking on cell phones and glancing into store windows. To anyone who didn’t know better, it was business as usual in Sterling. “So,” Alex said, turning to Josie. “How are we doing?”

Josie looked down at her hands in her lap. “Okay.”

“It’s not as bad as you thought, is it?”

“Not yet.”

“My daughter the optimist.” Alex smiled at her. “You want to split a BLT and a salad?”

“You haven’t even looked at a menu yet,” Josie said, and they both got out of the car.

Suddenly a rusted Dodge Dart ran the light at the head of Main Street, backfiring as it sped away. “Idiot,” Alex muttered, “I should get his plate number…” She broke off when she realized that Josie had vanished. “Josie!”

Then Alex saw her daughter, pressed against the sidewalk, where she’d flattened herself. Her face was white, her body trembling.

Alex knelt beside her. “It was a car. Just a car.” She helped Josie to her knees. All around them, people were watching and pretending not to.

Alex shielded Josie from their view. She had failed again. For someone renowned for her good judgment, she suddenly seemed to be lacking any. She thought of something she’d read on the Internet-how sometimes, when it came to grief, you could take one step forward and then three steps back. She wondered why the Internet did not add that when someone you loved was hurting, it cut you right to the bone, too. “All right,” Alex said, her arm anchored tight around Josie’s shoulders. “Let’s get you back home.”

Patrick had taken to living, eating, and sleeping his case. At the station, he acted cool and in command-he was the point man, after all, for all those investigators-but at home, he questioned every move he made. On his refrigerator were the pictures of the dead; on his bathroom mirror he’d created a dry-erase marker timeline of Peter’s day. He sat awake in the middle of the night, writing lists of questions: What was Peter doing at home before leaving for school? What else was on his computer? Where did he learn to shoot? How did he get guns? Where did the anger come from?

During the day, however, he plowed through the massive amount of information to be processed, and the even more massive amount of information to be gleaned. Now, Joan McCabe sat across from him. She had cried her way through the last box of Kleenex at the station, and was now wadding paper towels up in her fist. “I’m sorry,” she said to Patrick. “I thought this would get easier the more I do it.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” he said gently. “I do appreciate you taking the time to speak to me about your brother.”

Ed McCabe had been the only teacher killed in the shooting. His classroom had been at the top of the stairs, en route to the gymnasium; he’d had the bad fortune to come out and try to stop what was happening. According to school records, Peter had had McCabe as a math teacher in tenth grade. He’d gotten B’s. No one else could remember his not getting along with McCabe that year; most of the other students hadn’t even recalled Peter being in the class.

“There’s really nothing else I can tell you,” Joan said. “Maybe Philip remembers something.”

“Your husband?”

Joan looked up at him. “No. That’s Ed’s partner.”

Patrick leaned back in his chair. “Partner. As in-”

“Ed was gay,” Joan said.

It might be something, but then again, it might not. For all Patrick knew, Ed McCabe-who’d been just a hapless victim a half hour ago-could have been the reason Peter started shooting.

“No one at the school knew,” Joan said. “I think he was afraid of backlash. He told people in town that Philip was his old college roommate.”

Another victim-one who was still alive-was Natalie Zlenko. She’d been shot in the side and had to have her liver resected. Patrick thought he remembered seeing her name listed as president of the GLAAD club at Sterling High. She’d been one of the first people shot; McCabe had been one of the last.

Maybe Peter Houghton was homophobic.

Patrick handed Joan his card. “I’d really like to talk to Philip,” he said.

Lacy Houghton set a teapot and a plate of celery in front of Selena. “I don’t have any milk. I went to buy some, but…” Her voice trailed off, and Selena tried to fill in the blanks.

“I really appreciate you talking to me,” Selena said. “Whatever you can tell me, we’ll use to help Peter.”

Lacy nodded. “Anything,” she said. “Anything you want to know.”

“Well, let’s start with the easy stuff. Where was he born?”

“Right at Dartmouth-Hitchcock,” Lacy said.

“Normal delivery?”

“Totally. No complications.” She smiled a little. “I used to walk three miles every day when I was pregnant. Lewis thought I’d wind up delivering in someone’s driveway.”

“Did you nurse him? Was he a good eater?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t see why…”

“Because we have to see if there might be a brain disorder,” Selena said matter-of-factly. “An organic problem.”

“Oh,” Lacy said faintly. “Yes. I nursed him. He’s always been healthy. A little smaller than other kids his age, but neither Lewis nor I are very big people.”

“How was his social development as a child?”

“He didn’t have a lot of friends,” Lacy said. “Not like Joey.”

“Joey?”

“Peter’s older brother. Peter is a year younger, and much quieter. He got teased because of his size, and because he wasn’t as good an athlete as Joey….”

“What kind of relationship does Peter have with Joey?”

Lacy looked down at her knotted hands. “Joey died a year ago. He was killed in a car accident, by a drunk driver.”

Selena stopped writing. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yes,” Lacy said. “Me, too.”

Selena leaned back slightly in her chair. It was crazy, she knew, but just in case misfortune was contagious, she did not want to get too close. She thought of Sam, how she’d left him sleeping this morning in his crib. During the night he’d kicked off a sock; his toes were plump as early peas; it was all she could do not to taste his caramel skin. So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole. Love was sustenance, broken down and beating through your bloodstream.