He looked like a man who had not slept and had also, at some point, showered and shaved and put on cologne, which I noticed and which told me something.

My mother had taken the kids.

Wendy and Arthur arrived twenty minutes after he did, and Wendy walked past her son in the front hall without looking at him.

“Sit down,” she told him.

“All of you sit down.”

We sat in my living room like people waiting for test results.

Wendy started.

“Look at me and tell me what was missing in this house.”