One of them was about the girls.

Chadworth did not turn around for any of it.

The door closed.

A car started in the drive and pulled away, and then another one, and then the house was quiet in a way it had not been quiet in months.

He stood alone in the middle of his enormous living room, surrounded by nine hundred thousand dollars of furniture and art, and looked down at the rug where a gray rabbit’s ear was sticking up out of the crack in the sofa cushions.

He went over and worked it free and held it in both hands for a second.