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in her nightgown and sheet. He seemed frazzled, and he gazed on her with distaste. “Take the cuffs off, Al. She’s okay. Seems like King sniffed out more goodies in the basement.” He blew his nose into a wrinkled handkerchief.
    As Al, or Alex, unlocked the cuffs, Sandra heard the lieutenant mutter to the man in plainclothes, “Holy Mother of Christ, with the kid here and everything.” They looked away as she passed. A few seconds later, sleepwalking through the shattered living room, Sandra heard the lieutenant’s voice behind her.
    “Jimmy, give Mrs. Hudson a copy of the warrant. It must be on the floor there somewhere, by the table. Anybody run across any Tylenol?”
    In the baby’s room, Grace stopped crying the instant Sandra picked her up. The infant began to smack her lips and peer around eagerly with her beautiful almond-shaped eyes, watching the mobile with its dancing figures of Tigger, Kanga, and baby Roo. She’d be wailing for breakfast soon. Back in their bedroom, Moon’s deep, submissive voice was audible.
    “What’s all this for? The weed?”
    There was a dead silence and then a disgusted snort.
    “Sure thing, Clarence,” someone said. “Pull that sweatshirt over him and stick his ass in the cruiser. Grab his sneakers.”
    “Sean Daley’s on the porch,” the lieutenant said. “Let him have a good look.”
    The female officer, heavyset with short, curly hair, came up to Sandra in the baby’s room, stepping over a strewn pile of Luvs and crib sheets. She spoke in a hard, automatic voice. “Is there any place you could take the baby, ma’am? How about your neighbor upstairs? We’re gonna be here awhile.”
    Ten minutes later, having tossed a few baby supplies into a grocery bag, Sandra dragged herself up the stairs, bracing Grace awkwardly against her side. Her neighbor Spanky, an enormous woman in a fuchsia housedress as big as a tent, stood on the landing reaching out toward Sandra with flabby arms, a dreamlike figure at the end of a dark tunnel.

8
    D avid and Claire were sitting in the driveway outside David’s garage, with rain streaming sideways across the windshield and the car rocking in the gusts of wind. The moment had come, David told himself, either to step off the high-dive or head back down the ladder. The last time he could remember being in this position was with Faye in the back of a school bus, getting up the nerve to hold hands.
    He’d been stalling with apologies for his law rant at the dinner table.
    “Oh, pooh!” Claire poked his shoulder. “Gerry plays one note—politics—and he always has to be the smartest guy in the room. Your ignoring him for so long was hysterical. I bet he’s plotting his revenge at this very moment.” A cracking noise made her glance up into the thrashing trees. “Assuming he and his ingenue du jour aren’t otherwise occupied.”
    David began fiddling with the knob on the glove compartment.
    “I always end up feeling … I don’t know …”
    “Constipated, sure. But there are things you have to tiptoe around, right? Like, obviously, if someone asks your opinion of the death penalty, you go all peculiar and distant.”
    “Not distant,” David said. The glove compartment flopped open, and he reached down between his feet to retrieve a pencil. “Definitely peculiar.”
    “Okay, not distant.” Claire nodded. “Just fencing your garden.”
    She had beautifully even, very white teeth and a mouth that seemed always about to break into a smile.
    “I understand,” she continued. “We medievalists have our secrets, too, you know.”
    “Really? Like what?”
    “I can’t tell you. That’s the point.”
    “What sort of secrets then?”
    “Well …” She drew the word out. “One example. After you make full professor, they tell you who murdered the little princes in the Tower of London in 1483.”
    “Wow! Was it really Richard III? I’ve always thought he was framed.”
    “Like I said, I can’t tell you.”
    David shook his