“So it was . . . was it terminal?”

Again her father nodded. She saw tears in his eyes.

Maybe the revelation should be, in some bizarre, twisted way, a source of comfort. Mom was spared the dreaded ordeal of an extended terminal illness. That’s the last thing she would have wanted.

And this? Would she have wanted this?

Beck turns away from the closed door and heads on down the hallway to her childhood bedroom, with the cheerful blue and yellow decor she and Mom had chosen together years ago.

She sits on the bed and opens her laptop. Clicking on the recent browsing history, she brings up Mom’s blog site.

The detectives had mentioned that they’d seen the entry Beck posted there last night.

“You had to have the password to do that,” Detective Schneider pointed out. “Did your mother share that kind of information with you?”

“No,” she said. “I just guessed it.”

A few months ago she’d helped Mom change the PIN number for her new ATM card.

“I always use our phone number and my initials or Dad’s whenever I need a password for something,” Mom said.

“Bad idea. Too easy for someone to guess. You should use something else.”

Mom waved her off. She never worried about things like identity theft, or hacking. Until, of course, her personal e-mail account was hacked, not long after the PIN number conversation.

She told Beck about it on the phone, and Beck advised her to close that account, set up a new one, and again encouraged her to make up a unique password no one would guess.

Remembering that incident last night as she tried to figure out the blog account password, she nailed it on the third try. It was her father’s initials followed by the four-digit home phone number in reverse order.

When the detectives asked her for the password, she gave it to them, reminding herself that it isn’t a violation of her mother’s privacy.

This is, after all, a homicide investigation. They’re trying to get a search warrant for the electronic records, but that process takes time.

“Do you know your mother’s password for her most recent e-mail account?” Detective Burns asked. “Or did you try to guess it?”

The answer was no on both counts. But she mentioned that both passwords were most likely saved on Mom’s own laptop and cell phone, which were among the electronics that had been stolen in the robbery.

“Are you sure the passwords were there?”

“I assume they were because my mother mentioned a while back that she was having trouble remembering things, and that it was a good thing she didn’t have to reenter her passwords every time she wanted to check mail or write a blog. She said she always used some combination of initials and the phone number, and I told her she should use a made-up word you wouldn’t find in the dictionary, not a name or initials. Or that if she did use a dictionary word or initials, she should substitute a zero for an O, or a symbol for a letter—the at symbol for an A, or a dollar sign for an S. I also said she should put the phone number in reverse so that it would be harder for someone to guess, and she said—”

Beck had to break off to compose herself before she could go on with the story.

Now, her mother’s wry words echo in her head: These days, Beck, I’m lucky if I can remember the phone number forward—forget backward. And by the time I’m Gram’s age, I won’t know my own name.

They laughed together, and Mom later mentioned the incident in a funny blog she wrote about getting senile.

But she must have known even then, Beck realizes, that she wasn’t going to live to be a little old lady.

Swallowing a lump in her throat, Beck clicks the Sign in tab on her mother’s blog, then enters the user name—meredithheywood—and the password she’d guessed the other day.

Whoever has Mom’s laptop and phone can access the account . . .

But so can I.

Maybe there’s some clue there. Something the police wouldn’t have picked up on.

She logs in and is about to start searching when she remembers the e-mail account.

She should check that, too.

She switches over to the Web site for the e-mail service her mother uses, enters the address, then tries the password that worked for the blog account.

No luck.

She tries another combination of the same letters and numbers—forward, backward. She substitutes the @ symbol for an A, the $ sign for an S . . .

Nope.

This, she realizes, might take a while—thanks to her own brilliant advice about coming up with a word you wouldn’t find in the dictionary; something no one would ever guess . . .

Including me.

There must be very few people on this earth who after taking someone’s life wouldn’t spend the immediate aftermath, at least, endlessly replaying the scenario.

But even now, days later, the events of Saturday night are inescapable; a relentless mental movie set on a continuous play loop.

Crickets chirping.

Silver sliver of moon.

Aching legs, after all this time crouched in the bushes clutching the cast iron pan wrapped in a towel. It’s a small pan, but it weighs enough, brought down with enough force, to crush a skull.

A bag, stashed nearby, contains a couple of new pillows and an orange and yellow bedspread identical to the one Meredith wrote about on her blog, conveniently including a photo and mentioning that she’d bought it at Macy’s.

All the lights in the house extinguish one by one until everything is dark except a pair of bedroom windows.

It seems safe, after a reasonable wait, to make a move and slip into the kitchen. Safer than waiting outside, where someone from a neighboring house might spot the shadowy figure in the yard and call the police.

Get inside. Go. It’s time.

Open the folding knife, the one with the tortoiseshell handle.

Slice through the screen.

Crawl through the window.

Tiptoe, tiptoe, across the linoleum, one measured step at a time.

No turning back now.

But wait!

Footsteps overhead.

Creaking stairs.

Move back toward the window to escape.

Don’t run. Slow and steady, slow and steady.

The footsteps have stopped.

Meredith has paused halfway down the stairs. Why? Does she sense something?

Wait . . .

Wait . . .

Footsteps again, descending.

Meredith comes into the kitchen, turns on the light above the sink, opens cupboards  . . .

Don’t move. Don’t breathe.

Stay in the shadowy corner of the room, hiding in plain sight, a turtle lurking beneath its shell on a rocky landscape.

Wait . . .

Wait  . . .

Meredith turns.

But she doesn’t see. She isn’t wearing her glasses.

She goes back up the stairs.

Wait . . .

Wait . . .

At last, there hasn’t been any movement overhead for at least an hour, probably longer.

Only then is it safe to creep up the stairs clutching the towel-wrapped cast iron pan, a weapon chosen after careful research because it would have been, should have been, merciful.

Not as merciful, generally speaking, as an injection that would simply stop her heart from beating, but that would be needlessly cruel. Meredith hates needles.

Not as merciful, either, as a simple gunshot to the head, but . . .

I don’t have a gun. And I can’t get one—legally or illegally—without involving someone else.

And so, in the grand scheme of things, this was the best choice. An everyday household object as a weapon.

Flashlight beam swings across the shadowy bedroom.

Meredith, lying in her bed with her eyes closed.

She appears to be sleeping . . .

I thought she was sleeping! Really, I did! But she surprised me—again.

Meredith’s eyes open.