“She’s more than my girlfriend, okay? She’s my alibi.”

“What?” Hank’s disbelief was plain on his face.

“I was with her when Ezra was shot. I was at Stolen Farm.”

“Well, Jesus, Work. Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

“For Jean’s sake, Hank. But there’s one other thing. And I hope I’m wrong about this.”

“What?” Hank asked.

“I think Alex knew that Vanessa was my alibi. It’s possible that she went after her; she may have already killed her.”

Hank settled into my revelation; his features solidified into resigned determination. “I’ll find her, Work.” He did not smile. “Alive or dead. I’ll find her.”

“Find her alive, Hank,” I said, but he didn’t respond. He looked at me once, then put his eyes back on the road.

“Is your car at the hospital?” he asked.

“I have a car there.”

When we arrived at the hospital, I directed him to Dr. Stokes’s minivan. “I want you to go home,” Hank told me.

“Why? There’s nothing for me there.”

“Actually,” he said. “There is. Toothbrush, razor, clothes. I want you to pack all that crap up and find a motel room somewhere off the beaten track. Not too far away, just someplace you can lay low for a day or so. Get cleaned up. Get some sleep. Once I find Vanessa, we’ll go to Mills. But I don’t want to do that until we can walk in her front door with a sworn alibi.”

I got out of the car, leaned in the open door. “What are you going to do?”

“My job, Work. If she can be found, I’ll find her. Once you’re set up, let me know where you are. Call me on my cell.”

“I don’t think I can just sit around.” I tried to find the words to express what I felt. It was difficult. “I don’t want to hide anymore.”

“Twenty-four hours, Work. Thirty-six at the most.”

“I don’t like it.” I started to close the door.

“Hey,” Hank said. I turned back, and he said, “Don’t waste any time at the house, okay? Get in and get out. Mills could be looking for you already.”

“I understand,” I said, and watched him drive away.

I got in the minivan and went home. I looked at the high walls where once-white paint had grayed and then peeled. Barbara had always said the house had good bones, and she was right about that; but it had no heart, not with us living inside it. In place of laughter, trust, and joy, there was a hollow emptiness, a kind of rot, and I marveled at my blindness. Was it the alcohol, I wondered, that had made it bearable? Or was it something else, some inner failing? Maybe it was neither. They say that if you drop a frog into boiling water, he’ll hop right out. But put the same frog into cold water and slowly turn up the heat, and he’ll sit quietly until his blood begins to boil. He’ll let himself be cooked alive. Maybe that’s how it was for me. Maybe I was like that frog.

I thought about that, and then I thought about what Hank had said. His heart was in the right place. His head, too, for that matter. But I couldn’t go to a hotel. I couldn’t hide and I couldn’t pretend that this would just go away. If Mills came for me, she came. Alex, too, for that matter.

Done is done, I thought, and went inside.

I found Barbara in the kitchen, poised ten feet from the door, as if frozen or about to turn away. For a split second, her face seemed fluid, but then her mouth opened in a half smile and she ran to meet me. I stood there, straight-armed and stiff, as she threw her arms around me and squeezed.

“Oh, Work. Oh, honey. I’m so sorry I didn’t meet you at the jail. I just couldn’t.” The words came fast from her over-eager mouth, and the feel of them against my jail-grimed neck unsettled me. She pulled back, framed my face with her hands. Her words accelerated onto a slippery track. They ran over one another, tripped, and fell. They were soft and too sweet, like chocolate left in the sun. “People have been looking at me, you know,” she said. “The way people look sometimes, and I know what they’re thinking. And I know it’s no excuse, not compared to what you’ve been through, of course, but still it hurts. And I couldn’t go there, not to the jail, not to see you like that. I just knew that wouldn’t be a good thing for us. Unhealthy, you know. So when your Mr. Robins showed up, I asked him if he would meet you. I hope that was okay. I thought it would be. But then you didn’t come home, and you didn’t call, and I didn’t know what to think.” She sucked in a breath. “There’re just so many things I wanted to say to you, and not being able to, why, that was just about the worst.”

She fell silent, and in the absence of my response, awkwardness blossomed between us. She took her hands from my face, slid them to my shoulders, and squeezed me twice before allowing them to fall away. Eventually, they clutched the front of her shirt and settled there, white-knuckled.

“What was it?” I asked. She looked startled, as if she did not expect me to speak after all. “What was it that you wanted to say to me?”

She laughed, but it was born small and died a second later. She unclenched a hand and rubbed my right shoulder. She did not look at my face.

“You know, honey. Mainly just that I love you. That I believe in you. Those sorts of things.” She finally risked a glance at my face. “The kinds of things I hoped you’d want to hear, especially at a time like this.”

“That was very considerate of you,” I managed to say, for the sake of civility.

She actually blushed and smiled. She cast her eyes at the floor as if her carefully groomed eyelashes could still entice me. When she looked up, her uncertainties had vanished. Her voice firmed, as did her eyes and the renewed grip on my shoulders.

“Listen, Work. I know this is difficult. But we’ll get through it, okay? You’re innocent. I know that. There’s no way you’ll go back to jail. This will pass, and when it does, we’ll be fine. We can be the perfect couple again, like we were in the old days. People will look at us, and that’s what they’ll say: What a perfect couple. We just have to hang on and get through this. Get through it together.”

“ ‘Together,’ ” I parroted, thinking of the frog.

“It’s just a glitch. Huge and unfortunate, but just a glitch. That’s all. We can handle it.”

I blinked, and this time I actually saw the frog. The water bubbled and his blood began to boil. I wanted to scream, to warn him, but did not; and as I watched, his eyes boiled away. Poof. Right out of their sockets.

“I need a shower,” I said.

“Good idea,” Barbara agreed. “You take a nice hot shower, and when you get out, we’ll have a drink. We’ll have a drink and everything will be okay.” I started to turn away, but she spoke again, so softly that I almost missed it. “Just like old times,” she whispered. I looked at her eyes, but they were impenetrable, and her lips curved into the same half smile. “I love you, honey,” she said. I turned out of the kitchen, and she called after me, her voice already fading. “Welcome home.”

I went to the bedroom, where I found the bed perfectly made and flowers in a vase. The shades had been opened and light flooded in. In the mirror above the dresser I looked old and stepped upon, but there was resolution there, too; and I watched my eyes as I emptied my pockets and shed my days-old clothing. They did not look so old or so stepped upon as the rest of me.

In the shower, I turned the water as hot as I could bear. I lifted my face to the nozzle, let the water beat upon me. I didn’t hear the shower door open. I felt the draft, and then I felt her hands. They settled on my back like autumn leaves. I might have flinched.

“Shhh,” Barbara said gently. “Be still.” I started to turn. “Don’t turn around,” she said.

She reached around me and wet her hands in the shower. She ran the soap between them and replaced it on the soap dish. Then she put her hands on my chest, which grew slick beneath them. She must have felt my resistance, in my tense muscles, in my unyielding posture-perhaps in the rigidity of my silence. Yet she chose to ignore it, and her hands lathered a path from my chest to my stomach. She molded herself against my back and I felt the firm press of her flesh against my own. Water cascaded across my shoulders, forced its path down the joining of our bodies, and she opened herself to it, let it wet her. She slithered against me, insinuated her slender leg between my own. And her hands worked down to a place where in the past they had always been welcome.