Relentless

murdered, Penny closed her eyes. As I told her the rest of what I knew, I studied her pale lids, wondering if, when those two curtains raised, I would infer from her eyes fear or, worse, despair, or the steely resolve that would be more in character.
    Without opening her eyes, she asked, “How did they die?”
    “He didn’t say. I’m going to research it.”
    “You’re certain it was really Clitherow?”
    “I’ve never heard his voice, but I’m sure it was him.”
    “It couldn’t have been Waxx, another bit of terrorist theater?”
    “No. This voice was different from what I know of Waxx’s.” After a silence, she opened her eyes, which were as clear as ice water, and said, “The sonofabitch can’t have Milo.”
    “He won’t get any of us,” I assured her. I wondered how I could deliver on such a promise, but I would not hesitate to die trying.
    She squeezed my hands once, let go of them, and turned to her computer. “I want to read more of this bullshit, see if I can better understand the bull himself. Meanwhile … put on the alarm system.”

   From the kitchen, I went into the adjoining family room to have a word with Milo.
    On an overcast day like this, the polarized glass of the large triple-pane windows was not tinted. The house faced southeast, and on a bright morning, the glass would darken to control incoming sunlight without diminishing the view, which seemed no less spectacular now than in the moment when I had first seen it, during construction.
    Sitting on the sectional sofa, overlooking Milo at his coffee-table workstation, I said, “You okay?”
    “Pretty much.”
    “But not entirely.”
    He shrugged but kept his attention on the computer. “The house— that hurts.”
    “We’ll get another house.”
    “I know. But it won’t be the same.”
    “It’ll be better,” I promised.
    “Maybe. I guess it could be.”
    On his computer screen, something that might have been a three-dimensional blueprint of an elaborate silo-like structure with numerous stacked chambers rotated to his command.
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Where did it come from?”
    “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
    After a silence, I said, “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
    “No.”
    “Sooner or later,” I told him, “every kid thinks his old man’s an idiot.”
    Six-year-olds openly express affection. Most teenagers go through a period of sullen withdrawal or open hostility. Twenty-somethings have recovered from teenage hormonal madness, but have acquired a certain reserve.
    Milo was chronologically six, intellectually twenty-something, and emotionally maybe ten or eleven. Expressions of affection at times embarrassed him but did not yet offend him.
    Without looking away from the computer screen, he said, “I’m never gonna think you’re an idiot.”
    “Just wait. You’ll see.”
    “Never,” he said, and chewed on his lower lip.
    “Love you, Milo.”
    He nodded. “Yeah.”
    When I discovered I was chewing my lower lip, too, I changed the subject. “Where’s Lassie?”
    He pointed to a pair of cabinet doors to the right of the big plasma screen in the entertainment center.
    “She’s in the cabinet?” I asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “Did you put her there?”
    “No.”
    “Your mom didn’t put her there.”
    “No.”
    “She got in there herself?”
    “I think so. She likes it.”
    I went to the entertainment center and opened the cabinet doors to which Milo had pointed.
    Lassie sat in the deep cabinet, facing out, grinning, wagging the tip of her tail.
    “Why would she want to sit in a cabinet?” I asked Milo.
    “I think she didn’t like this thing.”
    “What thing?”
    “This thing on the computer that I don’t know what it is.”
    “So she hid from it in a cabinet?”
    “I don’t think she’s hiding.”
    “Then what’s she doing?”
    “Maybe meditating,” Milo said.
    “Dogs don’t meditate.”
    “Some do.”
    To Lassie, I said, “Come out of there. Come on, girl.”
    She would not move.
    “Okay,” I said, “I’m going to leave her in there, but I’m not going to close the doors on her.”
    “Whatever,” Milo said.
    Before I had crossed half the room, the stunning harbor view drew me once more to the windows.
    Between the near and farther channels, scores of sailboats and motor cruisers were tied up at midwater moorings. To board and disembark, an owner needed a smaller craft to use as a tender.
    Beyond the far shore of