Relentless

probably wouldn’t be able to learn who I had been, as a child, but I didn’t want to test their skills.
    I said, “Besides, I have a feeling like … he
wants
us to call the cops.”
    “Why would he want that?”
    “Either he wants us to call them or he doesn’t care if we do. This is so screwy. I haven’t done anything to him. There’s something about this we don’t understand.”
    “I don’t understand
any
of it,” she declared.
    “Exactly. Trust me on this. No cops just yet.”
    Leaving her with Milo and the dog, I searched the house, found no one. Nothing had been damaged. Everything seemed to be in order.
    All the doors were locked, and the security chains were engaged. The window latches were secure. No panes had been broken.
    Christmas was little more than six weeks away; but Waxx had not come down a chimney and had not departed through one. All the dampers were closed tight.
    In the master bathroom, I stripped off my pajamas and quickly dressed. I retrieved my wristwatch from the vanity, where I had left it before retiring for the night. The time was 4:54 A.M.
    Catching sight of myself in a mirror, I didn’t like what I saw. Face pale and damp with sweat, skin gray and grainy around the eyes, lips bloodless, mouth tight and grim.
    My eyes were especially disturbing. I didn’t see myself in them. I saw someone I had once been.
    When I returned to Milo’s room, he still slept.
    Lassie had gotten over her shame. From the bed, she stared at us imperiously and issued a long-suffering sigh, as though we were keeping her awake.
    Penny said, “I’m gonna scream if I don’t have a cookie.”

   This time: oatmeal-raisin with macadamia nuts. Penny was too agitated to sit at the table. She paced the kitchen as she nibbled the cookie. “You want milk?” I asked. “No. I want to blow up something.”
    “I’m having Scotch. Blow up what?”
    “Not just a tree stump, that’s for sure.”
    “We don’t have any stumps. Just trees.”
    “Like a hotel. Something at least twenty stories.”
    “Is that satisfying—blowing up a hotel?”
    “You’re so
relaxed
afterward,” she said. “Then let’s do it.”
    “We blew up a church once. That was just sad.”
    “I’m angry and scared. I don’t need sad on top of that.” I sat on a stool, my back to the breakfast bar, and watched her paceas I sipped the Scotch. The whiskey was just a prop; what calmed and fortified me was watching Penny.
    “Blowing things up,” she said, “relieves stress better than cookies.”
    “Plus it’s less fattening,” I noted, “and doesn’t lead to diabetes.”
    “I’m thinking maybe we’ve made a mistake not involving Milo in all that.”
    “I’m sure he’d enjoy blowing up buildings. What kid wouldn’t? But what about the effect on his personality development?”
    “I turned out okay, didn’t I?” she asked.
    “So far, you’re the nicest abnormal person I know. But if the cookies stop working for you …”
    Grimbald, her father, was a demolitions expert. In Las Vegas alone, he had brought down four old hotels to clear the land for bigger and glitzier enterprises. From the time Penny—then Brunhild—was five years old until she married me, he had taken her with him to watch his controlled blasts implode enormous structures.
    On a DVD that her folks produced for us, we have TV-news footage of young Penny at numerous events, clapping her hands in delight, giggling, and mugging for the camera as, behind her, huge hotels and office buildings and apartment towers and sports stadiums collapsed into ruins. She looked adorable.
    Grimbald and Clotilda titled the DVD
Memories
, and for the soundtrack they used Streisand singing “The Way We Were” as well as an old Perry Como tune, “Magic Moments.” They got teary-eyed when they played it every Christmas.
    “I’ve learned something about myself tonight,” Penny said.
    “Oh, good. Then it’s all been worthwhile.”
    “I didn’t know I could get this pissed off.”
    Penny dropped her half-eaten cookie in the kitchen sink.
    “Uh-oh,” I said.
    With a spatula, she shoved the cookie into the drain. She turned on the cold water, and then she thumbed the garbage-disposal button.
    In an instant, whirling steel obliterated the cookie, but she did not at once push the button again. She stared at the drain as the water spilled down through the churning blades.
    I began to suspect that in the theater of her mind, she was feeding pieces of Shearman