Chapter 17: Elm Street

The sedan door opened.

Marla did not get out.

She sat with one hand on the wheel and the dome light on her face, and she looked at the book in my hands.

Then she looked at her daughter.

"Brooke," she said. "Get in the car."

Brooke stood very still.

I saw her think about the key to the house and the ring on her hand.

I saw her think about twenty-five years of being told to get in the car.

"No," she said.

It was barely a word.

"Brooke."

"No, Mom."

Marla's eyes came back to me.

I had braced for a threat.

What she gave me instead was a long, flat, tired look, the look of a woman closing a ledger.

"You think this is finished," she said.

"I think it has started."

She pulled the door shut.

The sedan backed out of the ramp, turned, and went up into the night without a sound.

Behind me, sixty yards off, the engine of Jonas's car turned over.

Sunday morning I stood on the sidewalk of Elm Street at ten o'clock with Jonas on my left and Dominic's lawyer on my right.

The plastic Santa was still on the lawn.

The siding was still gray.

Up and down the block, doors were opening.

A man stood at his mailbox in a bathrobe.

Two women on a porch put down their coffee.

Behind a curtain across the street a face I had known for thirteen years was looking out at me.

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