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and she had the cleaning service come through that Mel had recommended, although every now and then, she let a week slip by and the laundry piled up and she’d see Matt wearing the same T-shirt for four days in a row and it wouldn’t bother her one bit and it didn’t seem to bother him, either. Sometimes, she forgot to load the dishwasher, and too many nights, they ordered from Domino’s or went to McDonald’s or called up Chinese Gardens for carry-out. Sometimes she cooked eggs for breakfast and left the pan on the stove and forgot about it. She accepted these minor infractions. Post-traumatic stress, she told herself. Shock. Death. Murder. The news of war overseas made her depressed, so she stopped watching anything but The Simpsons reruns and Judge Judy, as well as the collection of DVDs that they’d amassed—mainly rewatching screwball comedies from the 1930s and forgetting that there were too many half-used glasses of milk and soda and water sitting around in the rec room because the kids forgot to take them up and wash them out. She didn’t let it bother her, even when she noticed. The cleaning service might take care of it. Or they might not. Her mind was elsewhere. She did gain a great sense of accomplishment from working through two entire New York Times crossword puzzle books before June first, a record for her. She had avoided putting Hut’s things into storage or even sorting through all of his clothes that month. Sometimes, she just sat with his Burberry’s raincoat and looked at it as if trying to find him there. Livy now had her own therapist and felt completely like a princess because of it. Julie began wondering if Livy liked having her night frights just so she’d have something to talk about. But she’d been making a lot of progress since seeing Dr. Fishbain over in Ramapo Cliffs once a week. Mel had split up with her boyfriend and was thinking of buying her first house—at forty-one—not far away. Matt had kept to himself and refused the offer of therapy, and Eleanor had suggested that Julie just not push him on anything yet.

Between days back at work (three days on, ten-hour shifts, with Laura Reynen and Mel both helping with the kids), her three hours per week with her current therapist (because she needed three hours or more to get out everything that was going on in her mind), she had managed to keep moving, although somewhere in there she’d gained twelve pounds and so had started the Atkins Diet (lasted two weeks, but cheated the whole time), then the South Beach diet (maybe three weeks, against sneaking forbidden foods at two a.m. when thoughts of life and death sent her to the fridge) and settled into a modified version of those two diets with a little Weight Watchers and Dr. Phil on the side, and then a two mile walk every morning, and a jog twice a week with her sister. For some reason, giving a damn about the quick weight gain had gotten her out of the house and focused on something other than sorrow. She was moving forward, intentionally, away from death and Hut and murder and the ideas forming in her head about what life was about and why it should be lived at all. But the night fears continued— the dreams, the wakings, the sense that someone was there with her. She accepted a degree of insomnia, and afternoons turned into evenings too quickly, and she had to work to notice her children because it was as if her mind were clouding over real life and pushing her into the territory of dreams.

McGuane drove over to the house once or twice, for more questions, but Ben, her lawyer, suggested that she not answer much until he could explain how a body got lost or stolen in the morgue. Once, she saw McGuane sitting out in his car, on the street, looking as if he couldn’t decide whether to get out or not. Finally, he drove away.

4

One afternoon, by herself, Julie drove over to the break in the woods where the gravel path went up to the place where Hut had been murdered.

She felt a little scared, but parked the car, got out and went up the path. It was a beautiful day, and the birds were making a racket in the