She put her hand on the bathroom doorknob, flicked off the light before turning it. Now her eyes had to adjust in reverse, getting used to the darkness so she wouldn’t stumble over anything on her way back to the bed.

She returned to the window, half expecting to see the blue Ford Explorer out there. But that had been ditched long ago, and far from here. It would surely be found eventually, and it was hard to know whether that would end up being a good thing or bad. Lyall probably would have called the police by now. Useless as he was, he’d notice eventually that his wife hadn’t returned home. Drinking to all hours, staying out late with his friends, never helping out around the house, and that damn smelly dog. The Explorer had reeked of that beast. At least Lyall wasn’t a mean drunk. Every once in a while, he got this look, like maybe he wasn’t going to take it anymore. But it never lasted long. The guy didn’t have it in him to fight back.

Someone stirred in the other half of the bed she’d been sleeping in moments earlier.

She turned away from the window. There wasn’t much else to do but try to get back to sleep. Maybe, once the aspirin kicked in, she’d be able to nod off. She looked at the clock: 12:21 a.m.

There was no reason to get up early. No job to go to anymore. No one to make breakfast for.

She sat gently on the side of the bed, raised her legs ever so slowly and tucked them under the covers, lowered her head onto the pillow, trying her best not to breathe. If there was anything good about motel beds, this was it. The mattresses seemed to be resting on concrete, not box springs, and you could usually get in and out of bed without disturbing your partner’s sleep.

But not this time.

The person on the other side of the bed turned over and said, “What’s going on, babe?”

“Shh, go back to sleep,” she said.

“What’s going on?”

“I had a headache. I was looking for aspirin.”

“There’s some in the little case there.”

“I found them.”

A hand reached out and found her breast, kneading the nipple between thumb and forefinger.

“Jesus, Dwayne, I tell you I’ve got a headache, and then you cop a feel?”

He withdrew the hand. “You’re just stressed out. It’s going to take you a while to get over this whole Jan thing.”

The woman said, “What’s to get over? She’s dead.”

EIGHTEEN

“So you better get off my porch and hit the fucking road,” Horace Richler said to me.

“I… I don’t understand,” I said, standing at the open front door, looking into the faces of Horace and his wife, Gretchen.

“Too goddamn bad,” he said, and started putting his weight behind the door to close it.

“Wait!” I said. “Please! This doesn’t make any sense.”

“No kidding,” Horace said. “You wake us up in the middle of the night asking for our dead daughter, you’re damn right it makes no sense.”

He nearly had the door closed when Gretchen said, “Horace.”

“Huh?”

“Hang on a minute.” The door didn’t open any farther, but it didn’t close, either. Gretchen said to me, “Who did you say you are again?”

“David Harwood,” I said. “I live in Promise Falls.”

“And your wife’s name is Jan?”

Horace interrupted. “Christ’s sake, Gretchen, the guy’s a lunatic. Don’t encourage him.”

I said, “That’s right. Jan, or, you know, Janice. She’s Janice Harwood now, but before we got married she was Jan Richler.”

“There must be lots of Jan Richlers in the world,” Gretchen said. “You’ve come to the wrong house.”

I had the palm of my hand on the door, hoping it wouldn’t close farther.

“But her birth certificate says that her parents are Horace and Gretchen, that she was born here in Rochester.”

The two of them stared at me, not quite sure what to believe.

It was, surprisingly, Horace who asked, “What’s her birthday?” There was a defiant tone in his voice, like he wasn’t expecting me to know the answer.

I said, “August 14, 1975.”

It was as if the air had been let out of both of them. Horace acted as though he had taken a blow to the chest. He folded in on himself and his head drooped. He let go of the door, turned away, and took a step back into the house.

Gretchen’s face had fallen, but she held her spot at the door.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is as much a shock to me as it is to you.”

Gretchen shook her head sadly. “This is very hard on him.”

“I don’t know how to explain this,” I said. My knees felt weak, and I realized that I was trembling slightly. “My wife has been missing since early today-since Saturday, around the middle of the day. She just vanished. I’ve been trying to think of anyone she might have gotten in touch with, and that’s why I came here to see you.”

“Why would your wife have our daughter’s birth certificate?” Gretchen asked. “How is that possible?”

Before I could even attempt to come up with an explanation, I said, “Would it be all right if I came in?”

Gretchen turned toward her husband, who’d been listening without actually looking at us. “Horace?” she said. All he did was raise a hand dismissively, an act of surrender, suggesting it was up to his wife whether I’d be allowed inside.

“Come in, then,” she said, opening the door wider.

She led me into a living room filled with furniture that I was guessing had been handed down to them from their own parents. Only the drab couch looked less than twenty years old. What splashes of color there were came from pillows smothered in crocheted covers crudely resembling flowers. Scattered across the couch and chairs, they were like stamps on old manila envelopes. Cheap landscapes hung so high on the wall they nearly lined up with the ceiling.

I took a seat first in one of the chairs. Gretchen sat down on the couch, pulling her robe tightly around her. “Horace, come on, lovey, sit down.”

There were some framed family photos in the room, most of them featuring one or both of the Richlers, often with a boy. If the pictures could have been arranged in chronological order, I’d be able to see this boy’s progression from age three to a man in his early twenties. There was one picture of him-as an adult-in uniform.

Gretchen caught me looking. “That’s Bradley,” she said.

I nodded. I might normally have offered up a comment, that he was good-looking, a handsome fellow, which was true. But I was feeling too shell-shocked for pleasantries.

Reluctantly, Horace Richler came over to the couch and sat down next to his wife. Gretchen rested her hand on his pajama-clad knee.

“He’s dead,” Horace said, seeing that I’d been looking at the picture of the young man.

“Afghanistan,” Gretchen said. “One of those I.E.D.s.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“He was killed along with two Canadians,” she said. “Almost two years ago now. Just outside Kabul.”

The room was quiet for several seconds.

“So that’s both our children,” Gretchen said.

Hesitantly, I said, “I don’t see any pictures of your daughter.” I was desperate to see what she had looked like, even as a five-year-old. If it was Jan, I was sure I’d know it.

“We… don’t have any out,” Gretchen said.

I said nothing, waiting for an explanation.

“It’s… hard,” she said. “Even after all these years. To be reminded.”

Another uncomfortable silence ensued, until Horace, whose lips had already been going in and out in preparation, blurted, “I killed her.”

I said, barely able to find my voice, “What?”

He was looking down into his lap, seemingly ashamed. Gretchen gripped his knee harder and put her other hand to his shoulder. “Horace, don’t do this.”

“It’s true,” he said. “It’s been enough years that there’s no sense beating around the bush.”

Gretchen said to me, “It was a terrible, terrible thing. It wasn’t Horace’s fault.” Her face screwed up, like she was fighting back tears. “I lost a daughter and a husband that day. My husband’s never been the man he was once, not in thirty years. And he’s a good man. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.”