“So have you talked to Marissa yet today?” she asked.

“I don’t think she’s up yet. Guess she didn’t have any job interviews this morning,” Adam said, smirking.

“So do you really think one of her friends could’ve been involved?” “That’s ridiculous,” Adam said.

“I think so too,” Dana said, “but the detective kept asking about it. I don’t think he’d be asking if he didn’t think there was some possibility that-”

“Come on,” Alan said, “the guy’s name was Carlos Sanchez. I’ve never heard her talk about any Carlos Sanchezes, have you? Besides, he was an older guy. No, it definitely has nothing to do with her.”

“Maybe he was her drug dealer or something,” Dana said.

“Oh, come on, I really doubt that.”

“Why? She’s smoked pot in her room, and the pot has to be coming from somewhere.”

Adam considered this as he opened the drawer to his dresser, looking through a stack of folded shirts. It wasn’t totally beyond the realm of possibility that the break- in had something to do with Marissa. She’d had friends coming and going in the house since graduation, and occasionally Adam had seen her with people he’d never met before. One guy last week had looked pretty shady- long hair, tattoos up and down his arms. If it didn’t have to do with drugs, it could’ve had something to do with some guy she was dating.

“Last night I told her I don’t want her drinking and smoking in the house anymore,” Adam said. “If this had anything to do with her or not, I think we have to make it clear, if there’re any drugs in this house, she has to move out. That’s it, no bending, no negotiations.”

“And don’t you think that’s just a teensy bit hypocritical?”

They’d had this discussion before, so Adam knew exactly what she was implying: How could he tell his twenty- two- year- old daughter not to smoke pot in the house and have guys up to her room when as a teenager he’d gotten high and had sex with all his girlfriends in this very house, starting when he was sixteen years old?

“That was the seventies,” he said. “It was a different time.”

He was going to add, We know more now than we knew then, but he already felt like he was beating the clichйs to death.

“If she was your son I don’t think you’d have a problem with it.”

“That’s not true,” Adam said. He pulled on a navy long- sleeved shirt with a Fresh Meadow Country Club logo, remembering that he had a 7:24 tee- off time on Sunday with his friend Jeff. “I wouldn’t want my son to make the same mistakes I made.”

“Well, I still think there’s a double standard going on here,” Dana said.

Adam recognized that tone in her voice again. He knew that she wasn’t upset about what she pretended she was upset about. She was just looking for the right opening, dying to blame him for the shooting.

“Didn’t you want to call Clements?” he said, not exactly dismissing her, but the implication was there. Now fully dressed except for shoes and socks, he picked up his BlackBerry and checked his e-mail. He’d gotten two new e-mails- one from Carol suggesting Friday at four for a session, and one from his assistant, Lauren, saying that Jane Heller could do the phone session at three today, not four.

Dana, still standing there with her arms crossed, asked, “Aren’t you worried?”

“Worried about?” Adam asked. Darn it, Lauren had also written that his session with Dave Kellerman couldn’t be rescheduled. Dave was a newish patient who was just starting to make substantive progress, and Adam hated to have two weeks between sessions.

“The other guy, or person, whatever,” Dana said. “The one who got away.”

“Why would I be worried about him?”

He started typing a message: Hi Lauren, Please tell Kellerman I’ll call him personally to try to sched- then he stopped punching the keypad when he heard Dana say, “Can you pay attention to me instead of that stupid thing for one second?”

“This is important,” Adam said.

“And what happened last night isn’t?”

Adam rolled his eyes, then said, “What is it?”

“You shot somebody, and his accomplice, partner, whatever you want to call it, obviously knows where we live,” Dana said. “I find that very disturbing.”

Adam stared at her for a moment. She wasn’t exactly blaming him for the shooting yet, but she was oh so close.

“Don’t worry about it,” Adam said.

“How can you say that? How do you-”

“Because the cops know the dead guy’s name. These criminals, they’re always repeat offenders. They’re probably wanted for robberies all over the neighborhood. They probably made a list of whatchamacallits- known associates. It’s just a matter of going through the list and arresting the guy. If they didn’t arrest him already, it’s only a matter of time before they do.”

“I didn’t hear Clements mention anything about known associates,” Dana said. “He made it seem like they had no suspects at all.”

“That’s just the way cops are,” Adam said semidistractedly as he typed: ule. I’ll try him later today, if I can get hold of him at work.

Dana said, “I hope you’re right, but I didn’t get that vibe. I think if he had any suspects he would’ve- Can you please listen to me for God’s sake?”

“I’m sorry,” Adam said, still looking at his phone. “I have important stuff to take care of.”

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Why do you even care about work right now?”

“What am I supposed to do? Not go on with my life?”

“You act like… I don’t know… like you don’t care. I mean, I’m telling you I’m worried. I’m afraid he’s going to come back tonight and-”

“He’s not coming back.”

“How do you know?”

“Because why would he? That’s a surefire way to get caught, rob the place you already robbed.”

“Yeah, and what makes you think the guy’s a freaking Rhodes scholar? We’re talking about a criminal here, for God’s sake. He’s not necessarily thinking logically.”

Adam considered this, then said, “Even if he does come back, he’s not getting in. We’re changing the locks in an hour, the alarm guy’s coming down later to change the code. There’s no way anybody’s getting into this house again.”

“You don’t know th- And can you stop staring at that thing?” she nearly screamed. “It’s so goddamn rude.”

Now he looked at her and said, “What? What do you want me to do?”

“I’m scared,” she said. “I don’t think it’s enough.”

“It’s a state- of- the- art alarm system.”

“That didn’t help us last night.”

“Okay, I have an idea, let’s get a watchdog.”

He was saying this facetiously. She was allergic to dogs, and he knew she had no intention of taking immunotherapy shots for the rest of her life.

“Maybe we should move,” she said.

“What?” He couldn’t believe she was even suggesting this. She knew how much he loved the house, how much it meant to him.

“The house is worth a lot now,” she said. “Marissa’s out of school, will be on her own eventually, and I’ve been wanting to move anyway. We could move someplace small, a condo maybe in the city or-”

“You’re out of your mind,” Adam said.

“Why does wanting to move mean I’m out of my mind?”

“Because our house was robbed,” he said, “it’s not like it’s been contaminated with nuclear waste. How many other houses in the neighborhood have been robbed over the past couple of years? Did everybody else just pack up and move?”

“Everybody else didn’t kill one of the robbers.”

Adam glared at her hard and said, “Okay, here we go, finally, I knew this was coming. I’d appreciate it if you stopped it with your passive- aggressiveness and evasiveness. If you have something to say, please just come out and say it.”

“You know exactly what I want to say.”

“Then what’re you waiting for? Come on, let’s go, I want to hear it.”

Her lips moved and her mouth started to open a few times, as if she were about to speak, but she kept catching herself. Then she finally let out a deep breath and said, “This is ridiculous,” and marched out of the room melodramatically.