It’s far enough away from Tate and the dogs that I don’t worry.

Officer Berg sees the smoldering fire, too, and asks if we have a permit for it.

“A permit?” Will asks. “For the fire?” When Officer Berg says yes, Will goes on to explain that our son Tate had come home from school begging for s’mores. They’d read a book about them, S is for S’mores, and the rest of the day, Tate had a craving for them.

“The only way we did s’mores back in Chicago was in the toaster oven. This was just a quick treat,” Will says. “Completely harmless.”

“Around here,” Officer Berg tells him, uninterested in Tate’s craving, “you need a permit for any open fire.”

Will apologizes, blames ignorance, and the officer shrugs. “Next time you’ll know,” he says, forgiving us this one transgression. There are bigger issues at hand.

“Can I be excused?” Otto asks, saying he has homework to do, and I see this discomfort in his eyes. This is a lot for a fourteen-year-old boy to handle. Though much older than Tate, Otto is still a child. We forget that sometimes. I pat him on the shoulder. I lean in close to him and say, “We’re safe here, Otto. I want you to know that,” because I don’t want him to be scared. “Your dad and I are here to protect you,” I tell him.

Otto meets my eyes. I wonder if he believes me when I’m not so sure myself. Are we safe here?

“You can go,” the officer tells him and, as he leaves, I find my way to the other arm of the sofa, Officer Berg and I bisected by a velvet sofa the color of marigolds, the furniture left behind in the home all midcentury, and not, unfortunately, midcentury modern. It’s just old.

“You know why I’m here?” the officer asks, and I tell him that Will and I heard the siren late last night. That I know Mrs. Baines was murdered.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and I ask how she was murdered, though the details of her death have not yet been released. They’re waiting, he says, until the family has been notified.

“Mr. Baines doesn’t know?” I ask, but all he’ll say is that Mr. Baines was traveling for business. The first thought that crosses my mind is that, in cases like this, it’s always the husband. Mr. Baines, wherever he is, has done this, I think.

Berg tells us how the little Baines girl was the one who found Mrs. Baines dead. She called 911 and told the operator that Morgan wouldn’t wake up. I sharply inhale, trying not to imagine all the things that poor little girl might have seen.

“How old is she?” I ask, and Berg replies, “Six years old.”

A hand rises to my mouth. “Oh, how awful,” I say, and I can’t imagine it, Tate finding either Will or me dead.

“She and Tate are in school together,” Will declares, looking at Officer Berg and then me. They share the same teacher. They share the same peers. The island school serves children in grades kindergarten through fifth while the rest, those in middle school and beyond, have to be ferried to the mainland for their education. Only fifty-some students go to the elementary school. Nineteen in Tate’s classroom because his first grade is combined with the kindergarten class.

“Where is the little girl now?” I ask, and he tells me that she’s with family while they try to connect with Jeffrey, traveling for business in Tokyo. The fact that he was out of the country doesn’t make Jeffrey Baines any less culpable in my mind. He could have hired someone to carry out the task.

“The poor thing,” I say, imagining years’ worth of therapy in the child’s future.

“What can we do to help?” I ask Officer Berg, and he tells me he’s been speaking to residents along the street, asking them questions. “What kind of questions?” I ask.

“Can you tell me, Dr. Foust, where you were last night around eleven o’clock?” the officer asks. In other words, do I have an alibi for the time the homicide occurred?

Last night Will and I watched TV together, after we’d put Tate to bed. We’d lain on different sides of the room, him spread out on the sofa, me curled up on the love seat as we do. Our allocated seats. Shortly after we’d gotten situated and turned on the TV, Will brought me a glass of cabernet from the bottle I’d opened the night before.

I watched him for a while from my own seat, remembering that it wasn’t so long ago that I would have found it impossible to sit this far away from Will, on separate sofas. I thought fondly of the days that he would have handed me the wine with a lengthy kiss to the lips, another hand feeling me up as he did so, and I would have found myself easily wiled by the persuasive kiss and the persuasive hands and those eyes. Those eyes! And then one thing would have led to the next and, soon after, we would have giggled like teenagers as we tried to hastily and noiselessly make love on the sofa, ears tuned in to the creaks of the floorboards above us, the rasp of box springs, footsteps on the stairs, to be sure the boys still slept. There was a magnanimity about Will’s touch, something that once made me feel giddy and light-headed, drunk without a drop to drink. I couldn’t get enough of him. He was intoxicating.

But then I found the cigarette, a Marlboro Silver with lipstick the color of strawberries along its filter. I found that first, followed shortly after by charges for hotel rooms on our credit card statement, a pair of panties in our bedroom that I knew weren’t mine. I realized at once that Will was magnanimous and intoxicating to someone other than me.

I didn’t smoke. I didn’t wear lipstick. And I was far too sensible to leave my underwear lying around someone else’s home.

Will just looked at me when I shoved the credit card statement under his nose, when I asked him outright about the hotel charges on our bill. He appeared so taken aback that he’d been caught that he didn’t have the wherewithal to manufacture a lie.

Last night, after I’d finished that first glass of wine, Will offered to top me off and I said yes, liking the way the wine made me feel weightless and calm. The next thing I remember was the siren rousing me from sleep.