Grime and Punishment

and the children ought to move in here with me. It’s not safe for you to be living alone.”
    Jane gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. “Thelma, you’d have hardly been able to prevent this, and none of us were endangered anyway.“ This, she knew, was beside the point. Her mother-in-law had been harping for months on how they ought to move in with her. The bedrooms in her elegant condo were the size of skating rinks, but there were only two of them, and Jane sometimes had nightmares about living there and having to be Thelma’s “roommate.“ Of course, Thelma didn’t really want them there; what she was really angling for was an invitation to move in with them.
    “She’d be packed in thirty seconds,“ Jane had said to Shelley the week before, “if I even hinted that I might agree. It would be like having General Patton around the house. Slapping the troops—namely me—for their own good.“
    “You’ve got to stand firm, Jane,“ Shelley had advised. “She’d have you asking her permission to pee within the week.“
    “It’s this modern permissive society,“ Thelma was going on. “When standards are allowed to slip, we’re all in peril.“
    “I can’t see how that figures, Thelma. We don’t even know anything about this woman or why she was killed.“
    “Mark my words, it’ll all come out eventually and you’ll see I’m right. Ah, children, your mother has finally come to pick you up,“ she said as Mike and Katie came out of the second bedroom, which was fitted out as a TV room. Thelma had every video game in the world, part of her insidious campaign to make herself indispensable. She managed, too, by some mysterious process that Jane found highly suspicious, to get rental movies before they were even in the rental shops.
    “What’s goin’ on, Mom?“ Mike asked.
    “Mother! I was supposed to go to Jenny’s after school and Gram said you wouldn’t let me,“ Katie complained.
    Jane cast a black look at Thelma, who was smiling fondly on her grandchildren.
    “I’ll explain on the way home. Get your things,“ Jane said. “Thelma, I don’t know how to thank you for your support.“
    “It’s the least I can do, Jane. After all, they are my own flesh and blood.“
    “As she drove home (“No, Mike, my nerves are too frayed to ride with you in rush-hourtraffic.“), she explained to them what had happened in the most innocuous way she could. Her aim was to make the murder sound like a pure freak of nature that would almost instantly be sorted out, with no danger to them whatsoever. But in her own mind she was deeply troubled. If somebody could commit murder in Shelley’s house, they could do it in hers. The first thing she was going to do when she got home was check all the locks.
    The kids, however, weren’t upset. They were fascinated by the idea of a real live murder next door. To them, it was an adventure, impersonal and exciting, like something on television. Tomorrow they’d be the center of attention at school, famous for their proximity to something so out of the ordinary. They hadn’t known the victim, so they had no sense of personal loss. Nor had they had the misfortune of actually viewing death, as Jane had. Best of all, they showed no signs of making any connection with their father. They’d grieved him properly at the time, and still missed him, but this didn’t appear to be reactivating their distress, as it had with her.
    They’re so damned resilient, Jane thought. It must come from having no sense of their own mortality yet.
    Shelley came to dinner, and in front of the kids neither she nor Jane discussed the afternoon’s events. Todd turned up, filled to the brim with a double cheese Whopper and fries and content to listen to Mike and Katie’s account without taking much interest. Eventually they all wandered off to their separate pursuits, and Jane and Shelley were left to sit over the remnants of the makeshift dinner.
    “You’ll stay here tonight?“ Jane said. It was halfway between an invitation and an order.
    “Thanks, I’m planning to. Mary Ellen Revere invited me to stay at her house and I lied and said I’d already agreed to stay here. I know I’ve got to get it over with, sleeping in that house, but not until Paul gets back tomorrow. He tried to get a flight tonight and couldn’t. I called my sister and told her that, if this isn’t solved by the time they’re ready to come back, I want her to keep the kids a little longer. Jane,