“The rest,” you say, “is silence.” Petrie nods heavily.

“Yes,” he says.

There is a knock at the door. It opens. You see a plainclothes officer and wonder if it is the same one who came for Diana at the library, chased her, tumbled with her onto the hard, bare floor.

“We got word,” he says.

Petrie walks out of the room and closes the door behind him. When he returns, you see an odd surprise in his expression, an ending he did not expect, your twisting story with a final twist.

“Mark’s conscious,” Petrie tells you. “It looks like he’s going to recover.” You think, So only three deaths. Not four.

“We’re releasing you on your own recognizance,” Petrie adds. “Why?”

“Your lawyer and Stewart Grace have agreed to it.”

“Which means that Mark isn’t going to press charges.”

“That seems to be the case,” Petrie says.

Mark’s decision does not surprise you. Pressing charges would take time. It would mean a trial, and all a trial entails. He would have to confront your motive in attacking him, and address it. The word you painted on his car would swim again in the air around him. “Murderer.” He would not be well served by its repetition. Besides, he has his breakthrough to consider. He does not wish to be distracted.

You look at your hands and marvel that they are intact, that the force of bone on bone has not left your fingers mangled.

“What now?” you ask.

“You’re free to go,” Petrie tells you. “I’ll walk you out.”

There is paperwork, as there always is. You go through the routine, sign the various waivers, along with the inventory of what you’d had in your possession at the moment of arrest, your wallet along with everything that was in it, cash and credit cards, your driver’s license, the paltry evidence of your life.

“You’re lucky, you know,” Petrie says as you gather up your things. “You could have killed him. One swing of that limb, and you probably would have.”

You say nothing, but only move as Petrie directs you, down yet another corridor to the lobby of the police station, then through it to the front of the building.

Before he releases you, he stops, faces you. “Let this be the end of it,” he warns you.

You walk out of the station. Night has fallen. You look up into the cloudless sky, then draw your gaze downward, into the parking lot where, in the distance, Abby waits to take you home.

“Dad?”

Patty steps out from behind one of the building’s brick columns. She looks apprehensive, edgy, unsure of what to say or do. You see a dark brilliance sparkling in her eyes, a long-suppressed intelligence, all of it buried beneath the layers of mediocrity your fear imposed upon her. You cannot know where her freed mind will take her. You know only that wherever she goes, throughout all the tormented element, you will go there with her, remain steadfastly at her side.

You draw her protectively into your arms and declare the only truth you know. “I’ll always take care of you.”

She remains briefly in your embrace, then steps out of it. “Ready to go home?” she asks.

A voice says, Say you are.

And so you do.