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Caroline finished clipping the hedge, which took another fifteen minutes, and then turned the trimmer off. She glanced around the front yard, a rectangle enclosed by white picket fencing on the short sides, their one-story yellow brick house on one long side and, on the other long side, next to the street, a wire fence hidden in the hedge Caroline had just trimmed. The metal swing, where Wilson liked to sit, dangled empty from the limb of the live oak tree in the center of the yard. Parson roasted in a spot of sunlight on the front porch.

She climbed down the ladder, wondering if maybe he’d gone inside. She didn’t think her father would’ve wandered off anywhere, but with his memory getting worse, who knew?

She set down her clippers, and started calling “Dad!” like he was a missing dog. He wasn’t visible in the side yard. She strode back through the front yard and into the house, tromping down the hall in her dirty sneakers, shedding flakes of dirt and grass on the hardwood floors that she’d have to clean up later, calling for her father as she went, her actual dog, Parson Brown, on her heels. But the house—upstairs and down—was silent, and Wilson wasn’t there.

She stepped out onto the deck which overlooked the backyard, sloping gently downward, totally enclosed by trees and bamboo and viburnum. Otis’s shed, in the far corner of the yard, was always locked. She couldn’t see Wilson anywhere. She called his name a few times. “Dad! Wilson! Dad!” Nothing.

Her heart was beating fast now, painful adrenaline pumping through her like it did when one of her children had wandered off. She walked back through the house again, yelling Wilson’s name, through the front yard and then up and down their block of Friar’s Way, calling for him. There was nobody about, nobody that she could question. Should she start knocking on doors? He could be anywhere by now. Should she get in the car and start looking that way? She needed help. Vic wouldn’t answer his phone. Ava was at Asperger’s support group. Otis would be home from work soon, but she couldn’t wait for him.

She trotted back home and, in the kitchen, Parson panting beside her, called the police. She’d just finished up giving her report, fighting back panic, when Wilson and Otis, in his McDonald’s uniform, stepped in through the back door.

Wilson, red-faced under his brown safari hat, strands of his white hair pasted to his forehead, looked on the verge of heatstroke.

“Never mind,” she told the woman on the phone and hung up. “Where have you been?” Caroline removed his hat, got him situated in a chair, and made him drink a glass of water.

“Hot as hell in there,” he said.

“In where?”

“In my shed.” Otis slapped his grandfather on the shoulder as if he were a naughty little rascal. “I heard him rattling the door, trying to get out.”

“He must’ve locked himself in,” Caroline suggested. “Did you give him a key?” Wilson had been advising Otis on his current project, whatever it was. They’d been science pals for years.

“It was unlocked,” Wilson said.

Otis shook his head. “No, sir. I always keep it locked. There’s a key hidden out there, but he doesn’t know where it is. Nobody’s allowed in there but me.”

Caroline sank into a kitchen chair.

“I didn’t want to go in there,” Wilson said. “She made me.”

“Who made you?” Caroline asked, but she knew the answer.

“The padlock was locked from the outside,” Otis said. “He couldn’t have done it.”

“That woman,” Wilson said. “That strange woman. She pushed me in there and locked the door.”

Caroline found herself wanting, horribly, to giggle, the way she had when they were attempting the crossword puzzle. “Why would she do that, Dad?”

“I damn near suffocated in there. Couldn’t get the windows open.”

“He shouldn’t be in there,” Otis said to his mother in a scolding tone. “There’s dangerous chemicals in there.”

“What chemicals?”

He took a few steps away from her. “Just my stuff. I know what I’m doing. But if you’re in there, you need protection.”

“Protection,” Caroline repeated, and thought of birth control, which brought the giggles back