I have a minute or two at best before the phone dies. My call goes to voice mail. I leave a quick message. I ask him to call me. I don’t tell him why.

Before I can end the call, my cell phone dies.

I drop the dead phone into my coat pocket. I step across the driveway, moving toward the porch. The house, from the outside, is dark. Will has forgotten to leave the porch light on for me. There are lights on inside, but I can’t see the boys from here.

There’s a warmness about the house. Heat spews from the vents, gray against the near blackness of night. Outside, it’s windy and cold. The snow that’s fallen over the last few days blows about, creating snowdrifts on the driveways and streets. The sky is clear. There’s no threat of snow tonight but forecasters are going hog wild about a storm that’s to arrive late tomorrow. The first substantial storm of the season.

A noise from behind startles me. It’s a grinding noise, something discordant. I’m not ten feet from the porch when I hear it. I spin and at first I don’t see him because his body is blocked by a formidable tree. But then he steps forward, away from the tree, and I see him moving slowly, deliberately, a snow shovel dragging behind him and through the street.

The snow shovel is the sound that I hear. Metal on concrete. He holds on to the shaft of the shovel with a gloved hand, scraping the blade across the street. Jeffrey Baines.

Will is in the house making dinner. The kitchen is in the rear of the house. He wouldn’t hear me if I screamed.

At the end of our drive, Jeffrey turns and makes his way toward me. There’s something bedraggled about him. His hair stands on end. His dark eyes are rheumy and red-rimmed. His glasses are missing. He looks nothing like the suave, affable man I met at the memorial service the other day. Rather, he looks like something the cat dragged in.

My eyes go to the shovel. It’s the kind of thing that’s versatile. It has dual purposes because not only could he hit me over the head and kill me with it, but he could use it to bury my body.

Does he know I watched him and Courtney at the memorial service? That I was in her home?

I’m stricken with a sudden terror: What if there are security cameras inside her home? One of those fancy new doorbells with the camera to let you know who’s at your door when you’re not there?

“Jeffrey,” I say, inching backward. I try not to let my imagination get the best of me. There could be so many reasons why he’s here. So many other reasons than the one I imagine.

“You’re home,” I say because I’ve only just realized that his home is no longer a crime scene.

Jeffrey senses my fear. He hears it in my voice; he sees it in my body language. My feet retreat, though it’s inappreciable the way that they do. But still, his eyes drop to them. He sees the movement. Like a dog, he can smell my fear.

“I was shoveling my drive. I saw you pull up,” he says, and I reply, “Oh,” realizing that if he did—if he saw my car pull into the drive fifteen or twenty minutes ago—he may have seen me force my way into the home next door. He may have heard the voice mail I left for Officer Berg.

“Where’s your daughter?” I ask.

He says, “She’s busy with her toys.” As I look across the street, I see a light on in a second-floor window. The shades are open, the bedroom bright. I see the little girl’s silhouette as she bounds around the room with a teddy bear on her shoulders, as if giving him a piggyback ride. The little girl is laughing to herself, to her bear. It only adds to my unease. I think of what Jeffrey confessed, about how she and Morgan weren’t close.

Is she glad her stepmother is dead? Is she glad to have her father back all to herself?

“I told her I’d be just a minute. Am I keeping you from something?” Jeffrey asks, running a gloved hand through his hair. He wears gloves, but no hat. I wonder why, if he’s bundled up to shovel snow, he wears no hat. Do the gloves serve another purpose than keeping his hands warm?

“Will,” I tell him, inching backward, “is inside. The boys. I haven’t been home all day” is what I say, though it’s a pathetic excuse, and I know as I say it that I should have said something more tangible than that, more concrete, more decisive. Dinner is ready.

But my reply is wishy-washy at best, and it’s Jeffrey instead who is decisive as he says, “Your husband isn’t home.”

“Of course he’s home,” I say, but as I turn back to the house, I take in the darkness of our home, the lack of movement, the sudden realization that Will’s car isn’t in the drive. How did I not realize when I pulled in and parked that Will’s car wasn’t here? I wasn’t paying attention when I got home. I was too caught up in other things to notice.

I sink my hand into my pocket. I’ll call Will, find out where he is. I’ll beg him to come home.

But the nonresponsive black screen reminds me: my cell phone is dead.

My face must whiten. Jeffrey asks, “Is everything all right, Sadie?” and as tears of panic prick my eyes, I force them back. I swallow against a lump in my throat and say, “Yes, yes, of course. Everything is fine.”

I lie and tell him then, “It’s been a busy day. It slipped my mind. Will had to pick our son up from a friend’s house. He lives just around the block,” I say, pointing arbitrarily behind me, hoping Jeffrey might assume it will be a quick trip for Will. There and back in a matter of minutes. He’ll be home soon.

I tell Jeffrey, “I better get inside. Get dinner started. It was nice seeing you,” though I’m terrified to turn my back to him. But there’s no other way. I have to get inside, close the door and lock the dead bolt behind myself. I hear the dogs bark. I see their faces pressed to the windows that flank the front door. But where they are, trapped inside, they can’t help me.

I hold my breath as I turn. I grind my teeth, steel myself for the agonizing pain of the square blade against the back of my head.