He was, he would soon discover, dead wrong.

And his mother’s four whispered words, don’t come home this weekend, were the first crack in that comfortable assumption.

A mother who tells her son not to come home is a mother who is afraid of what he will find, or afraid of what will happen to her if he comes.

Either way, Alvin booked a flight for the next morning.

Whatever Carmen was afraid of, he intended to see it for himself.