Part 002 · PROLOGUE: The Errand | 2 of 2

The first thing Evan noticed when he came through the mudroom was that the television was off.

Not the silence. The television.

Thomas liked noise even when he was not watching. Alice complained about it and then complained when Nora turned it off. The house was rarely quiet at this hour unless Samuel had finally gone to sleep and everyone else had been threatened with whispering.

Evan set the restaurant bag on the kitchen counter.

"I'm back."

No answer.

He put the pharmacy bag beside the food. Alice's crackers stayed in his hand.

"Nora?"

He heard something then, but not a voice. A faint tapping upstairs, irregular enough that he could not place it. Heat moving through a pipe. A loose cord against glass. Something ordinary.

He walked into the family room. Samuel's bouncer was empty.

"Alice? Thomas?"

He went upstairs two at a time.

The children's bedroom door was closed. He tried the handle. Locked.

For a second he simply held it, as if the wrong response from a doorknob could be corrected by trying again. The lock was an old privacy latch, not something they normally used. He knocked hard.

"Alice? Open the door."

Nothing.

"Thomas?"

Cold air moved across the hall.

Their bedroom door stood open. One of the windows beyond the bed was raised high enough that the curtain lifted and fell against the wall. Evan stared at it. January air poured into the room.

"Nora?"

He crossed to the window and looked down.

She was on the ground below, partly on the narrow strip of winter grass beside the driveway. One arm lay awkwardly away from her body. Her face was turned toward the house.

For one impossible second he thought she had slipped while doing something at the window. Then he saw the marks at her wrists and neck.

"Nora!"

Her eyes opened.

Evan had his phone in his hand without remembering taking it out. He hit emergency call and nearly dropped it before the dispatcher answered.

"Nine-one-one. What is the address of your emergency?"

He gave the address, too fast.

"Say it again, slowly."

He did.

"Tell me what happened."

"My wife is outside. She fell. I think she fell from the second floor. My kids are in a locked room. I can't get in."

"Is your wife awake?"

Evan leaned farther over the sill. "Nora. Can you hear me?"

Her mouth moved.

"She's awake. I think. Nora, don't move."

"Do not move her. Is she bleeding heavily?"

"I don't know. There's blood, but I don't know."

"Stay on the phone with me. Are the children responding?"

"I can't get to them. The door's locked."

"Can you unlock it?"

"No."

"Is there another adult in the house?"

"No."

Evan looked down again. "Nora, what happened?"

Her answer came faintly. He made her repeat it.

"I hurt them."

The words did not fit the room, the open window, the pharmacy bag downstairs, anything.

"What?"

"I hurt them."

Evan backed away from the window.

The dispatcher was speaking. He could hear her voice but not the sentence.

"Sir? Evan? I need you to listen to me."

"The kids."

"Go to the children. Take the phone with you. Put me on speaker if you can."

He ran back into the hall and hit the bedroom door with his shoulder. Pain shot down his arm. The door held.

"Sir, do you have anything you can use to open the door?"

He looked around without seeing. His hand went to the handle again, uselessly, as if the lock might have changed.

"Evan."

The dispatcher had his name because he had given it. For a moment he could not remember doing that either.

"I'm here."

"Can you force the door safely?"

He hit it again, lower this time, near the latch. Wood cracked. On the third impact the frame gave enough for the door to swing inward.

He stopped.

The phone fell from his hand and struck the floor.

"Alice."

The dispatcher called his name through the speaker.

He stepped into the room.

"Alice."

He went to her first because her name was already in his mouth. He touched her shoulder, then tried to lift her before the dispatcher shouted from the floor.

"Evan, I need you to pick up the phone."

He did not.

"Alice. Alice, wake up."

Nothing.

He saw Thomas and moved toward him, then back toward Alice, then toward Samuel. He could not make the room into an order his mind could follow.

The dispatcher kept talking.

Evan picked up the phone.

"Tell me what to do."

She told him to check breathing. She told him where to put his hands. He did the first thing wrong and she corrected him. He said Alice's name so many times it stopped sounding like a name.

"One child at a time," the dispatcher said. "Tell me what you see."

He tried.

He heard sirens before he could finish answering her questions.

The first paramedic through the front door asked where the living patient was.

Evan pointed upstairs and outside at the same time.

"My wife is outside. The kids are upstairs."

The paramedic looked at the patrol officer behind him. "Outside first. Send the next crew up."

"The children aren't breathing," Evan said.

"Another crew is right behind us."

"They're not breathing."

The officer took Evan by the upper arm, not roughly. "Show me the room."

Two more responders came through the mudroom before they reached the stairs. The house filled quickly with radios, boots, medical bags, and short questions that seemed to require answers Evan had already given to someone else.

At the top of the stairs he tried to go back into the children's room. The officer stopped him at the threshold.

"They need space."

"Those are my kids."

"I know."

"No, you don't. Move."

The officer did not move.

Downstairs, someone called for a backboard. Another voice asked whether Nora had moved since the fall. Evan twisted away from the officer and went to the open window.

Paramedics were kneeling around her now. One held her head still while another cut fabric away from her wrist. A patrol officer moved too close to the stretcher and a paramedic snapped at him to back up.

"I need room to work."

"I need to know if she said anything."

"Then you can ask when she isn't on the ground with a spine injury. Back up."

The officer backed up.

Evan gripped the window frame.

"Nora."

Nobody below looked up.

A different officer guided him away from the window. "Come downstairs with me."

"I need to stay with the kids."

"The medics are with them."

"And Nora?"

"They're with her too."

It sounded impossible that everybody could be with everybody when he could not get to any of them.

In the kitchen, the takeout bag still sat where he had left it. A dark stain of condensation had formed beneath one container. The pharmacy bag stood upright beside it, stapled shut.

An officer asked him to sit. Evan stayed standing.

"What time did you leave the house?"

"I don't know."

"Approximately."

"Look at my phone. The order. I don't know."

"We'll get there. Was anyone else supposed to be in the house?"

"No."

"Was the door locked when you came back?"

"The outside door? No. I used my key. I don't know. The bedroom was locked."

The officer wrote something down.

"Did you see anyone leaving? Any car you didn't recognize?"

"No."

The question landed differently now. Evan looked toward the stairs.

"She said she hurt them."

The officer's pen stopped. "Nora said that?"

"Yes. Outside. From the window. I asked what happened."

"What exactly did she say?"

Evan stared at him.

"I just told you."

"I need the exact words if you can remember them."

"She said, 'I hurt them.' Twice."

The officer wrote it down.

Evan heard movement in the hall. A stretcher passed the kitchen doorway so quickly he saw only the top of Nora's hair, an oxygen mask, straps, and hands keeping her still.

He stepped toward it.

"I'm going with her."

A paramedic walking beside the stretcher shook his head. "Not in this ambulance."

"I'm her husband."

"You can follow to the hospital. We need room."

"Where are you taking her?"

The paramedic answered without slowing.

Evan turned toward the stairs again.

A man in a plain dark coat was coming down. He introduced himself as Detective Owen Price. He did not offer a theory. He did not ask Evan why Nora had done anything.

"Mr. Whitcomb, I need a few basic things from you. Then we'll get you where you need to go."

"My kids are upstairs."

Price's face changed, but he did not look away. "I know."

"Are they going to the hospital too?"

Price waited one second too long.

Evan understood before he answered.

The rest came as separate pieces. Pronounced. All three. The medical examiner would be contacted. Someone would stay with the house. Evan could not go upstairs again. An officer would take him to the hospital because he was in no condition to drive.

Evan said Alice's name.

Price asked him to sit.

This time Evan did.

He looked at the crackers on the counter. The bright package was still unopened.

The hospital corridor was overheated. Evan kept his coat on. A nurse told him Nora was alive and being evaluated for a serious spinal injury. Another person asked for insurance information. Evan handed over a card and then could not remember whether it was medical or dental until the woman handed it back.

Price found him outside a set of closed double doors with a legal pad in his hand.

"I can come back," the detective said.

Evan shook his head. "No. Ask."

Price sat two chairs away rather than beside him.

"You said dinner was already ordered?"

"Not paid. She set it up. I checked it and paid."

"Pickup, not delivery?"

"Pickup."

"Your choice?"

Evan looked at him. "What does that mean?"

"It means I'm asking who suggested pickup."

"Nora did. We pick it up all the time."

Price wrote that down without comment.

"And the pharmacy?"

"She told me the prescription was ready. She had called."

"Was it ready?"

"The medication was. Insurance held it up."

"How long?"

"I don't know. A few minutes. More than I wanted."

Price checked something on the pad. "The restaurant was running behind too?"

"Yes."

"And Nora texted while you were waiting."

Evan looked at his hands. "She asked how long."

"Once?"

"Yes."

"What did you tell her?"

"That I was still waiting. That I had the pharmacy next."

Price made another note.

Evan could hear a cart rolling somewhere beyond the double doors. He watched the narrow gap between them as if Nora might appear standing there, whole and able to explain the part that made no sense.

Price turned the legal pad so he could compare two lines. "You expected the errand to be shorter when you left."

Evan swallowed. "It was dinner. Then the pharmacy. It wasn't supposed to take that long."

Price nodded once. "The restaurant delay and the pharmacy problem extended it."

He did not say what the extra time meant.

Evan did not ask.

Price drew a small circle around the interval he had written on the page, then set the pen across the pad. Beyond the doors, Nora was alive. Alice, Thomas, and Samuel were dead. Evan sat with his hands empty and watched the circle of ink dry.