“You’re telling me to lie to him.”

“I’m telling you not to stand in that driveway arguing about a five-year-old while she waits in the back seat.”

I said I would call when we were ten minutes out.

He said, “If you change your mind in the next twenty minutes, don’t call me.

Call the police.” Then the line went quiet.

The Buick keys were in the nightstand drawer where I had dropped them that afternoon, beside a hotel receipt and a rubber band.

I put them in my pocket and went down the back stairs.