“They said they’d hurt Kris,” Craig said. “They said — the gym, the loan —”
“Then you come to your mother,” Lenora said. “You come to the door, and you knock. And you say, ‘Mom, I’m drowning.’ And you let me stand in the water with you.”
She looked at him for a long, long moment.
“You used my voice, son. My voice. I raised you on it.”
The doorbell rang.
Not once.
Twice, firmly, the way someone rings when they’ve been told to wait.
Nobody breathed.
I walked to the front hall and opened the door.
A woman in a dark blazer stood on the porch, with a badge on her belt and a uniformed officer one step behind her.
“Ms. Pratt? Detective Iverson.” She nodded past me. “I believe Mr. Hank Dwyer called ahead.”
“Yes,” I said. “Come in.”
She walked into the dining room.
She stopped at the end of the table.
