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By Root 1101 0

one with the homemade pain reliever John gave you. They took that old bottle with them, as well as the bones they unearthed and what they presumed were remnants of clothing. They placed in Ziploc bags the skull and the jawbone that Garnet dug up last night. They labeled and brought to their van the crowbar and the ax that Tansy Dunmore left for you. But they did not leave with either the bones you found or Tansy’s knife. They did not know to ask about those other bones, and you did not volunteer the information that they existed and were stored at that moment in your bedroom armoire. And the knife? It must have gotten lost when you were brought to the emergency room. At least that’s what you told them. The last time you saw the knife was here in the kitchen, you explained. You worked with the troopers to search the kitchen and your car and the basement. You suggested that, perhaps, it had wound up in Emily’s station wagon, because that was the car your wife had driven when she followed the ambulance to the emergency room. You told the troopers you would be sure to look there when she and the twins returned later that day. And then they left, the van rumbling down your driveway, and they were out of your life—at least for the moment. You waved to them casually from the porch, the wind seeming to slice through the gray sweatshirt with your airline’s logo on the chest.

Now, before going back inside, you stroll to the greenhouse, where you gather up three of Hallie and Garnet’s American Girl dolls. Your own children won’t be back for hours, and Ashley might enjoy them. The dolls have been out there since the night Molly Francoeur was over for a playdate. Sadly, Molly won’t be back. That is painfully clear. A lost opportunity. Despite the pain that comes with grasping the dolls like bags of groceries—you can feel the pressure against your stitches—you carry them in precisely this fashion back into the house. No sooner have you pulled open the screen door than your skull starts to throb and you feel that daggerlike pain in your lower back, and you know from experience that, at the very least, Ethan and Ashley have returned. Perhaps Sandra, too.

And, sure enough, there is Ashley in the den, her face melancholy, sitting before the woodstove. Already a small puddle is forming beneath her on the brick hearth. She looks up at you when you walk into the room, and instantly she notices the dolls in your arms.

“Here,” you tell her, and you place them on the floor before her, watching as the white bonnet on one of the dolls soaks up the lake water like a sponge. “I thought it might be fun for you to have some more dolls. My girls wouldn’t mind.”

She smiles, and it dawns on you that you have never before seen her smile.

“Your breathers,” she says.

You move her Dora the Explorer backpack so you can sit beside her. “Yes. My breathers.” And then, just the way you did with Hallie and Garnet before Flight 1611 crashed into Lake Champlain, you suggest a story line for the dolls, the barest outline of a tale about three sisters—triplets—who all fall in love with the same prince. Then you step back from your role as creator and allow Ashley to add the details that will bring the story to life.

You look up from Ashley and the dolls when the doorbell rings. Apparently, you had been so engrossed in the game that you hadn’t heard the vehicle as it bumped along the gravel driveway. When you turn back to the child, planning to tell her that you’ll be gone just a moment, she has vanished. And so you nod to yourself and climb to your feet. You pass through the kitchen, peering once down the stairs to the basement as you cross the room to the entry hallway, and then open the front door. The woman there introduces herself as Valerian Wainscott, the psychiatrist John Hardin wants you to meet.

You tell her you are sorry for the muddy footprints that you and the troopers from the Major Crime Unit have left in the hallway and the kitchen, but she waves off any apology. The woman is roughly Emily’s age, slight, with short blond hair in natural ringlets