Out in the lot the wind whipped through the trees. She spent some time with the cops. She told them about the ski mask in the Hanna case, and the floppy hat, and the bad leg. The officer did not seem impressed. “Ski mask on the road, no information as to his walk. Then floppy hat, bad leg. Different individual, probably,” he said. “Too bad you didn’t see the guy in the road take a few steps.”

“Look. This was an attempted murder.”

“More likely, ma’am, an attempt to frighten you. There wasn’t enough explosive to kill you inside the passenger compartment. On the other hand, any explosive at all is terrifically dangerous around a gas tank. You were lucky.”

“Please give your reports to Sergeant Cheney. It may be a link to the Hanna case.”

“I will.”

“Who else would try to blow us up? I don’t have any enemies like that.”

“How would this man even know you were in the case? And if he knew, why would he want to kill you?”

“Because-I don’t know why.”

“I’ll talk to Cheney.” They talked about her security system.

Bob waited for her in the truck, petting Hitchcock.

“Did you walk him?” she asked through the window.

“Yeah. He took a good long whiz. Must’ve smelled the explosive. He was heading for the beach.”

“Tell me you didn’t go there!”

“I stayed by the truck. The beach was roped off. They’re still cleaning up.”

She slammed the door and got in. “Whew! It’s evil out there!” She unclipped her keys and they dropped onto the floor.

While she felt around for them, Bob said, “You don’t have to worry anymore, Mom. This car’s safer today than most days.”

Finding them, she reached toward the back seat to give Hitchcock the opportunity to lick her wrist and hand.

“You were right about the bad karma,” Bob said. “He followed us here. It’s like, if you accidentally spill your soda on some kid, of course he turns out to be the meanest psycho kid in school, and waits for you after school, gets you back much worse. Know what I mean?”

“What did the police say to you?”

“‘What’s he look like?’ I told them.”

“Bob, do you remember? Was the man in the parking lot wearing a ski mask? Or a floppy hat?”

Bob shrugged. “He was a ways away.”

“Maybe. Bob-” Bob had his arms around Hitchcock’s damp, furry neck, his eyes closed, his cheek pressed against the dog’s ear. Hair pressed flat to his head, ears standing out, Bob looked a bit like a dog himself as he communed with Hitchcock. Nina caught herself thinking, If anything ever happens to that dog-and she knew she was really thinking about Bob. A sharp pain lanced through her right eye.

“Yeah, Mom?”

“How sure are you that the man by the Bronco was the same as the man in the ski mask on the road?”

“I just thought it must be him. I’m sorry, Mom. I just figured, you know. I couldn’t see the man by the Bronco through the rain.”

“It’s okay, honey. I think you saved our lives.”

“Yeah, Hitchie, we saved you.” Bob hugged the dog some more. He did not seem particularly upset by the whole incident.

Nina said, “The world has-it’s changed. It’s not a safe place.”

“It never was, Mom. That’s why we buy good locks and use ’em.”

That night, as Nina lay in her bed reading, Bob knocked and came in and sat down in the wicker chair. He usually stayed up much later than she did and slept as late as he could in the morning, but he asked her to wake him up if he slept through his alarm.

“But tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“The dump takes hazardous stuff on Sundays. We have some things under the house I need to get rid of. Taylor’s garage is full, too. What are you reading?”

She struggled to remember. “A book about the Big Bang. New theories about what the universe looked like in the first few minutes after the explosion. Speaking of big bangs, is any of the material you have been collecting flammable? Or potentially explosive?”

“Only a little.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. Don’t store anything like that under the house!”

“We charge twenty bucks per house to haul away old motor oil, mostly, Mom. We have all the customers we can manage. We’ll put it in the backyard under a tarp if you want.”

“Why do you need money, Bob? You have a new bass. You like your skateboard, and you can’t want new clothes after all the shopping we’ve been doing.”

Bob dropped his eyes to Hitchcock, snoozing on the carpet, and nudged him with his stockinged foot. “I want to take a trip to see my dad.”

Nina put her fingers to her temple, closed her eyes. “You saw him in Sweden a few months ago.”

“I need to go again.”

“You miss him so much?”

“Well, sure, I miss him, but the thing is, I talked to him a couple of weeks ago. He lost his job with the Stockholm Opera Company and he’s back in Germany. He’s having trouble with his hands.”

Kurt Scott, Bob’s father, was a concert pianist who had eked out a living touring Europe for most of Bob’s life. He hadn’t known about Bob’s existence until a few years before, because Nina hadn’t wanted him to know. He had left her, waiting for him, with no word, soon after she learned she was pregnant. That day had become a turning point in her life, and she had polished the memory, along with the grief and rage over being abandoned, for so many years, that even when she learned years later that Kurt had left her to save her life, she had not been able to change her feelings from that day. The memory was encysted in her, permanently, it seemed.

But Bob had no such memories. Since discovering each other, he and Kurt had seen each other several times and developed a close bond that didn’t include her.

Nine felt a now-familiar tugging at her heart. She didn’t want Bob to leave her. It wasn’t Kurt’s fault that his life was in Europe or Bob’s fault that he wanted to see him again, but she didn’t want Bob to go, even for a few weeks. Her life, her routines, were built around Bob. She knew she feared that one day he might go and live with Kurt. Then what would she do? He was her companion, her fellow traveler.

All right, tell the truth. She didn’t want to stay alone in the house, not right now.

She had barely seen Kurt in the years since Bob’s birth. She trusted him with Bob, knew he cared for Bob and had been unfairly deprived of the chance to father him over the years, knew he needed to make up time. But she didn’t see why he had to take Bob away right now, at the start of a new school year, when she had so many plans for them. Okay, she hadn’t made many plans. But she would think some up, right now.

“Now isn’t a good time,” she said.

“I’m not asking you for a ticket or anything, Mom. I’ll pay my own way.”

“I’m thinking we should spend some time poking around the Gold Country on weekends,” Nina said. “Take a car trip up to Idaho to ski. Maybe Uncle Matt and Aunt Andrea and Troy and Brianna would come with us.”

“Troy and Brianna are in school. Like me. Aunt Andrea’s busy with the new baby and Uncle Matt works twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, winter and summer.”

This was more or less true. Troy, her nephew, a few years younger than Bob, had been diagnosed with a learning disability and couldn’t miss school, and her brother Matt’s tow-truck business had started up the day parasailing got too cold on the lake. There would be no big happy family trip to Idaho.

Bob ran his hand through his dark hair. Like Kurt’s, his eyes were a speckled green.

“Did your dad ask you to come?”

“No. But he’d like it.”

Nina wanted to say, But I won’t like it if you leave, but Bob didn’t need any more burdens on him right now. “What’s wrong with his hands?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s talk more about it tomorrow night,” she said. “It’s been a hard day. I’ll give your dad a call.”

“Okay. Want to go to Wild Waters in Sparks tomorrow after I finish? They close next week.”