Five Days in Summer

have worn a bra, she should have taught her children better, she should have stayed home every single minute, she should never have desired those hours alone to work or even just for shopping.
    The sharp, squealing noise. The pounding on the floor.
    A thud of struggle and Sammie’s sharp cry, the blotting of his voice, panic electrifying her and she couldn’t move. She listened to him thrash on the floor so close she should have been able to touch him.
    The corn man grabbed her arm and gave her another shot and her body died again and her brain burned.
    Her brain became a thing in itself. A floating muscle. Alive without instruction, like a severed limb. Rebellious. Kicked with hatred for her circumstances. Her brain combusted and left her body, throwing fire into the air until there was no oxygen left to breathe.
    Something was wrong with her baby boy and she couldn’t help him. Her soul urged toward him and she couldn’t flicker a muscle to help. She was stone. Burning stone.
    And there was no more air, her burned-up brain had sucked it all away.

Chapter 26
    Will drove and drove and everywhere he turned there was access to water: water trapped in interior ponds, water breaking against the ubiquitous shores. And as he drove he saw boats everywhere: boats for sale, boats dragged behind cars, boats docked at crowded marinas, boats launched into ponds from public beaches, boats anchored half a mile into the ocean, white sails drifting on acres of blue. He drove and he looked and sometimes he saw them, the police, driving ahead of him or passing next to him and he wondered, Have they found her? Have they found my children? and he kept driving because he knew they had not. They were driving everywhere and nowhere, just like him.
    Sarah sat in the backseat entertaining Maxi, who blissfully knew only enough to miss her mommy. She held her pink velour bear against her face like a pillow. When you were only one, Mommy got sick and died. You were only a baby and you can’t remember her. I don’t know who those other shadows were you think you remember. We all imagine things. He would raise Maxi alone.
    No one will ever hurt you. You are loved.
    David had never admitted to being afraid of thedark, but Sammie had. Emily sitting on the side of Sam’s bed, tucking his blanket under his chin, smoothing her hand down along his soft cheek. “Monsters are pretend.” Bending to kiss his forehead, and again. “There’s no reason to be afraid of the dark.” David listening from his own bed, catching Will’s eye as he stood in the doorway watching his sons collect up their mother’s love. David’s eyes breaking from his to follow a shadow as it shifted across the ceiling. “You have nothing to worry about.” Emily standing, smiling at Sam. “Mommy and Daddy are here.”
    They had trained their children to trust the world.
    They had trained them to forgive their enemies and, at the same time, recognize the moment when it was necessary to fight.
    Had they heard the snap of their own innocence breaking when they understood they had never really been safe and their enemies did not deserve forgiveness?
    Will’s foot pressed the accelerator and he passed the speed limit. Images of the bright day flashed by, skimming the sides of the car like light grazing a bullet. But in this nightmare, the bullet never arrived anywhere. It continued forward, gathering momentum until its speed blinded you and you couldn’t see it but you knew it had passed through your life because when it vanished it left behind a devastated future.
    He remembered this moment. He was only four. The cowboy, the chocolate cake, the red bike he’d wanted.
    Mrs. Simon running from her house.
    His body remembered the freefall, landing in a deep cushion of forgetting.
    He was falling now, peeling away from the core of his life.
    Driving. Falling.
    He blinked his eyes to stay focused on the road.
    Then Sarah’s hand slipped from behind onto his shoulder, and the gentle press of her fingers into his muscles brought him into the moment, like a pause from rewind.
    “Will,” Sarah whispered, “Maxi’s asleep.”
    He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Sarah looking away, trying not to embarrass him. How long had he been crying?
    “We can’t keep driving around forever.”

Chapter 27
    Amy Cardoza stood bleary-eyed in front of the enormous map of Cape Cod that had covered the conference room wall since she first joined the Mashpee Police Department. It