“Get off my property or I’ll call the police.”

The man reached into his coat and took out a Polaroid.

As he held it up to the peephole, Theresa felt something break inside her.

It was a photo of Ethan lying on a steel operating table, naked under clinical blue light. The left side of his face looked deeply bruised, and she couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. Before she knew what she was doing, her hand was reaching for the chain and turning back the dead bolt.

Theresa pulled the door open as the man collapsed his umbrella and leaned it against the brick. Behind him, a cold steady rain laid down an undercurrent of white noise on the sleeping city. A dark-colored Mercedes Sprinter was parked a few houses down. Not a fixture on her street. She wondered if the van was his.

“David Pilcher,” the man said, extending his hand.

“What have you done to him?” Theresa asked, not taking it. “Is he dead?”

“May I come in?”

She moved back as Pilcher stepped over the threshold, his black wingtips glistening with beads of rainwater.

“I can take these off,” he said, gesturing to his shoes.

“Don’t worry about it.”

She led him into the living room and they sat down across from one another, Theresa on the couch, Pilcher on a wooden, straight-backed chair she’d dragged over from the dining room table.

“You hosted a party here tonight?” he asked.

“A celebration of my husband’s life.”

“Sounds lovely.”

She suddenly felt very tired, the lightbulb over her head almost too much for her retinas to bear.

“Why do you have a picture of my husband, Mr. Pilcher?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

“What if I were to tell you that your husband is alive?”

For ten seconds, Theresa didn’t breathe.

There was the noise of the dishwasher, of rain falling on the roof, of her throbbing heart, and nothing else.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Then how can I trust—”

He held up a hand, his black eyes crinkling. “Better to listen right now.”

“Are you with the government?”

“No, but again, who I am isn’t important. It’s what I have to offer you.”

“Ethan is alive?”

“Yes.”

Her throat tightened, but she held herself together.

“Where is he?” She could only whisper.

Pilcher shook his head. “I could sit here and tell you everything, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

“How do you know?”

“Experience.”

“You won’t tell me where my husband is?”

“No, and if you ask me again, I’ll get up, walk out that door, and you’ll never see me again, which means you’ll never see Ethan again.”

“Is he hurt?” She could feel a compacted mass of emotion beginning to loosen behind her sternum.

“He’s fine.”

“Do you want money? I can—”

“Ethan isn’t being ransomed. This has nothing to do with money, Theresa.” Pilcher scooted forward, now sitting on the edge of the chair and staring at her through those piercing black eyes whose intensity suggested a massive intellect behind them. “I am extending to you and your son a one-time offer.”

Pilcher reached into the inner pocket of his coat, carefully removed a pair of half-inch glass vials containing a clear liquid, and set them on the coffee table. They’d been plugged with tiny corks.

“What’s that?” Theresa asked.

“A reunion.”

“A reunion?”

“With your husband.”

“This is a joke—”

“No, it’s not.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is all I can give you.”

“Well, it doesn’t mean anything to me. And you expect me to—what?—drink that down, just see what happens?”

“You’re welcome to refuse, Theresa.”

“What’s in the vials?”

“A short-acting, powerful sedative.”

“And when I wake up, I’m magically back with Ethan?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, but generally speaking, yes.”

Pilcher turned his head, glanced toward the front windows, and then refocused his gaze on Theresa.

“It will be light soon,” he said. “I need your answer.”

She took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes.

“I’m in no condition to be making a decision like this.”

“But you must.”

Theresa pushed against her legs and came slowly to her feet.

“That could be poison,” she said, pointing at the table.

“Why do you think I’d want to hurt you?”

“I have no idea. Maybe Ethan got mixed up in something.”

“If I wanted to kill you, Theresa...” He stopped himself. “You strike me as a person adept at reading others. What does your gut tell you? That I’m lying?”

She walked over to the mantel, stood there studying the family portrait they had made last year—Ethan and Ben in white Polo shirts, Theresa in a white summer dress, everyone’s skin Photoshopped to perfection and features sharp under the studio lighting. At the time, they’d laughed at how cheesy and staged it had all turned out, but now, standing here in the predawn stillness of her living room, being offered a chance to see him again, the photo of the three of them brought out a lump in the back of her throat.

“What you’re doing,” she said, her eyes still fixed on her husband, “if it’s fake...is as cruel as it gets. Offering a grieving widow a chance to see her husband again.”

She looked at Pilcher.

“Is this real?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I want to believe you,” she said.

“I know.”

“I want to so badly.”

“I understand it’s a leap of faith,” he said.

“You come tonight,” she said, “of all nights. When I’m tired and drunk and filled to bursting with thoughts of him. I would guess that’s not by accident.”

Pilcher reached out and lifted one of the vials.

Held it up.

She watched him.

She took a breath in and let it out.

Then she started walking across the living room toward the staircase.

“Where are you going?” Pilcher asked.

“To get my son.”

“You’ll do it then? You’ll come with me?”

She stopped at the base of the stairs and looked back at Pilcher across the living room. “If I do this,” she said, “will we have our old life back?”

Pilcher said, “What do you mean by ‘old life’? This house? This city? Your friends?”

Theresa nodded.

“If you and Ben choose to come with me, nothing will ever be the same. You will not see this house again. So in that sense, no.”

“But I’ll be with Ethan. Our family will be together.”

“Yes.”

She started up the stairs to wake her son. Maybe it was the exhaustion, maybe the emotion, but it felt so surreal. The air electric. There was a part of her screaming in the back of her mind what a fool she was. That no sane person would even consider such a proposition. But as she reached the second floor and moved down the hall toward Ben’s room, she acknowledged that she wasn’t sane, wasn’t operating on the basis of logic or reason. She was broken and lonely, and beyond everything else, she missed her husband so much that even the uncertain possibility of a life with him—with their family reunited—might be worth signing everything else away.

Theresa sat down on Ben’s bed and shook his shoulder.

The boy stirred.

“Ben,” she said. “Wake up.”

He yawned and rubbed his eyes. She helped him to sit up.

“It’s still dark,” he said.

“I know. I have a surprise for you.”

“Really?”

“There’s a man downstairs. His name is Mr. Pilcher. He’s going to take us to Daddy.”

She could see Ben’s face glowing in the soft illumination of the nightlight beside his bed.

Her words had hit him like a blast of sunlight, the fog of sleep fast dissolving away, an alertness crystallizing in his eyes.

“Daddy’s alive?” he asked.

She didn’t even know if she fully believed.

What had Pilcher called it?