Much in that world is puzzling to Hannah: that multimillionaire bankrupts are not bankrupt, as in the commonplace sense of the word.

  Obviously the Jarretts are a rich family but far from the wealthiest of Detroit families. Wes has a carefully calibrated relationship with his father from whom he is financially independent yet with whom he feels obliged to act with deference. He jokes that his father, like all the Jarretts, is “litigious”—continuously involved in lawsuits, as plaintiff and as defendant.

  “Do you mean that they are ‘litigious’—vindictive? That Wes might be vindictive, too?”

  “We’ll discuss it another time. You’re becoming emotional, Hannah. I don’t want to upset you.”

  “Well—I am upset, I think. You didn’t call me—you didn’t answer my calls—for so long, I thought that something had happened to you …”

  There, Hannah has said it. Exactly what she hadn’t wished to say, and in this plaintive reproachful voice, shameful to hear, afterward mortifying to recall.

  Quickly Y.K. assures her that he is very sorry, he will never neglect her again.

  And yes, he wants to meet Conor and Katya. Very badly. As soon as Hannah can arrange it, he will be there.

  How warm, how sincere he sounds! Hannah is moved to tears.

  Rapidly Hannah calculates: next day, afternoon, after the children’s school. The weather has been unseasonably warm for early November, they can meet outdoors. She will pick Conor and Katya up at school and bring them to meet her lover, at a county park a few miles from Far Hills where no one will recognize her.

  Yes, I have missed you.

  Yes, I will love you forever.

  “Today, a decision will be made.”

  Hannah wears the (restrung) pearls, to meet her lover in Lone Lake Park.

  To introduce her children to her lover, in Lone Lake Park, Hannah wears the (restrung) pearls that were a gift from her grandmother.

  “If he notices. If he says something.”

  For the pearls are a good-luck omen. A gift to Hannah from her grandmother who’d seemed to favor Hannah over the other grandchildren.

  For this occasion Hannah wears tailored black trousers in an exquisite light-wool fabric, a dove-gray suede jacket (newly purchased, Neiman Marcus) open at the throat to display the pearls with their subtle pink cast. On her feet black leather Ferragamos, medium heel.

  Her mouth, that wound of yearning, is pale-glossy-pink, as luminous as the pearls.

  In the (restrung) pearls, in her beautiful understated clothes Hannah has brought the children directly from Far Hills Day to Lone Lake Park at the edge of West Bloomfield Township, miles west on Hickory Grove Road where they have never been before. Though taken frequently to small boutique parks in Far Hills, usually by Ismelda, they have never been to this large park in a semirural area.

  “This will be our secret. No one else will know.”

  Promised to them as a “special outing”—“a surprise”—just Conor and Katya and Mommy, who has been mysterious about the visit. The children sense Mommy’s excitement, perhaps they are beginning to be baffled why.

  Lone Lake Park is large, sprawling, undistinguished. The lake (if there is a lake) isn’t visible from the road. Hiking trails into a deciduous woods seems to be the main attraction. There is a small perfunctory playground—a single set of swings, a battered-looking slide, a children’s wading pool dry and littered with leaves. A sinister-looking concrete shed—faded signs men and women at opposite ends. An asphalt parking lot in which less than half a dozen vehicles are parked and in the near distance a weedy baseball field and a café with a red neon sign rawly lit in daylight.

  The sky is a bright chill eye-aching blue. An autumnal wind is blowing, leaves scuttle across the ground like the husks of beetles.

  “Looks like we have the park to ourselves!”—Hannah speaks brightly, nervously, sensing that the children are disappointed to see no other children.

  A park this size, a county park for hikers, for adults primarily, not a park designed for Far Hills children.

  Like all Far Hills children, Hannah thinks, her children have grown up with certain expectations. They are not “spoiled”—not exactly. But a single glance at this county park and you know that something is missing.

  Observing the smaller, lower-income houses on Hickory Grove west of Bloomfield Hills, strip malls, gas stations, and fast-food restaurants, you can see that something is missing.

  The small café is nothing like restaurants to which Conor and Katya are usually taken. Neon signs in the windows advertising Molson, Budweiser—clearly a tavern. But if food is served they must have ice cream, too, Hannah thinks. That will be the reward: a short hike through the woods with Mommy and Mommy’s friend, looping back to the café, ice cream before supper, an unexpected treat.

  Mommy means: bargaining with children who must never sense that you are bargaining with them.

  Hannah glances about for a male figure. For him.

  But there are few other visitors in sight. Teenagers smoking cigarettes at a picnic table, a lone hiker at a trailhead entering the woods. A burly man just emerging from the men’s lavatory but then, for some reason, disappearing again inside. No one who resembles Y.K.

  But Hannah and the children are early; she has brought them directly from school.

  He has said he couldn’t get away from Detroit until three. But he will come directly to the park on I-75, he has checked the location on a map.

  “You don’t want me to meet you in Far Hills?”—Y.K. asked not accusingly but teasingly, as Hannah stammered, “I—I think—it might be better if …”

  Y.K. laughed, pleasantly. Of course—he understood!

  He doesn’t want anyone to know about them yet, either.

  Hannah is trying not to be (visibly) nervous. The children will sense Mommy’s mood. Especially Conor who seems to be suspicious of her. She steels herself for the maddening whine Mom-my, why are we here!

  Katya, at least, is never suspicious of Mommy. Utterly trusting of Mommy.

  Why Mommy loves Katya best.

  (This is a secret!)

  She’d been too restless to remain at home staring at the clock. Thinking—Today, a decision will be made.

  When Wes returns home in the evening, Hannah may inform him—Today, a decision was made.

  In the house Ismelda was vacuuming, cleaning rooms that are already clean, the roar of the vacuum abrasive to the nerves but if Hannah were to tell her please never mind, don’t bother, you just vacuumed yesterday, Ismelda will blink at her employer in surprise, alarm; too much effort to try to explain and then, subsequently, Ismelda will neglect parts of the house that need daily cleaning like the kitchen floor and Wes will notice, for Wes invariably does notice such neglect.

  Hannah, what the hell? Why is the floor sticky?

  Or, Hannah? These shirts are poorly ironed.

  Choosing her clothes with care, trying not to be overwhelmed by the plenitude of her closet(s). Almost easier, Hannah thinks, to purchase new clothes than to try to sort through the old like sorting through tried-out, failed dreams drooping from cushioned hangers, too painfully reminding her of past efforts, failures.

  Will no one ever love me? … Enough?

  I have tried so hard. I have worn out my heart in trying …

  A black silk-and-wool sweater beneath the chic suede jacket and the crisp-creased black trousers. Sensibly, the Ferragamo shoes in which she might walk without wincing in pain (for a short distance at least) in the autumn woods with her children and the man who will be their stepfather.

  Hannah laughs, frightened. None of this is remotely real, is it!

  Nonetheless, fastening the little clasp, adjusting the pink-toned pearls around her neck. Her perfect face powdered, the pale-glossy mouth primed to smile.

  Try as she did to locate every pearl that slipped from the broken string to roll about the bedroom floor Hannah must have missed several, for the restrung necklace seems to her shorter than the original.

  At the children’s school Hannah arrived twenty minutes early. Parked at the rear as usual, the gleaming white Buick Riviera first in line though soon another vehicle pulled up behind her, another early-eager parent, also a mother, attractive made-up face blurred through a tinted windshield except for the mommy anxiety which leached through.

  Losing the children. That will be the punishment.

  “Litigious”—know what that means?

  Go for the jugular. The husband’s strategy.

  Hannah peers through the rearview mirror but cannot make out the face of the woman/mother in the vehicle behind her.

  Hoping that they might lock eyes. Exchange smiles, mouth greetings.

  Be very careful, Hannah. Don’t make my mistake.

  On her way out of the house Hannah brought with her the morning paper, left by Wes in an untidy heap on a kitchen chair. No longer does Wes try to shield Hannah from upsetting news, there is too much of it now, spilling over, uncontainable.

  In his usual hurry to depart for the Fisher Center. Unfailingly courteous to Hannah without quite looking at her. When she’d called after him in a friendly/unreproachful voice did he know if he’d be home for dinner and if so, approximately when?—Wes called back over his shoulder Don’t know, will let you know.

  If there’s a call, it will likely be from Wes’s assistant. Girl with the squeaky voice, whom Hannah has never met.

  Mrs. Jarrett? Mr. Jarrett says he is sorry, he has a dinner appointment this evening …

  “Fuck ‘Mr. Jarrett.’”

  Hannah’s mouth in a (silent) spasm.

  Opening the Free Press, seeing the shocking front-page headline—Son of Murdered GM Executive Rusch and Wife, Probable Suicide.

  Hannah reads in disbelief, astonishment: Christina’s son has killed himself?

  Yes, there is the identical photograph Hannah saw a week ago in the Free Press. Frowning Bernard Rusch, 32—ice-pick eyes, spoiled petulant mouth.

  Evidently Bernard had shot himself the previous day. Death is believed to have been “instantaneous,” a single shot to the head fired from a weapon discovered at the scene. A “suicide note” was discovered also but its contents have not (yet) been released to the media.

  The body of the deceased was found not at the Rusch house, where Bernard Rusch lived and where his parents had been found dead the previous week, but elsewhere in Bloomfield, in a private rental property.

  Bernard Rusch’s attorneys reported him missing when he failed to turn up at Bloomfield police headquarters where he was scheduled to be interviewed the previous day.

  Hannah is shaken. There can be only one reason Bernard Rusch killed himself shortly after his parents’ deaths: He was their murderer. The middle-aged son killed his parents, and now he has killed himself.

  Hannah wonders why Wes hadn’t told her this shocking news. Why he’d hurried out of the house without showing her the newspaper. Too much, too much terrible news too close to home, spilling over, an oil slick, uncontainable, a rebuff of Wes’s conviction that the Rusch murders, like the Babysitter murders, have been racially motivated: opening skirmishes of the race war in which, eventually, the “white race” will triumph …

  But Hannah has never believed that. Far more likely, Bernard Rusch murdered his parents for their money, and out of personal animosity.

  “Christina! I am so, so sorry.”

  Her lips move numbly, she has no one to whom she can speak.

  The shame of it, along with the heartbreak! Hannah cannot even imagine her friend’s last minutes, realizing that her son wanted her to die.

  No woman ever imagines that a child of hers might grow up and one day slaughter her, Hannah thinks with a shudder.

  “Mom-my! Why are we here!”

  Pettishly Conor calls to Mommy, he has investigated the derelict playground, he has found nothing that interests him.

  The swings appear to be for older children, even the lowest is too high for Conor, if he tries to sit on the seat his feet can’t reach the ground. Brashly he climbs to the top of the rusted slide then thinks better of sliding down it.

  “Mom-my! When can we go home?”

  “Conor, we’ve just arrived. We’re going to walk in the woods …”

  Conor mutters something inaudible. Hannah is dreading to hear, one day, all too soon, her irritable son cursing.

  Fortunately, Katya is much easier to please. The four-year-old is excited just to be in a new place. A murmuration of black-feathered birds exploding out of a marsh enthralls her, a sudden galloping of white-tailed deer into the forest. Discovering a rotted rubber ball in the weeds is enchanting to Katya as if the ball were a special gift for her.

  Bored with the playground Conor comes to play ball with Katya, bouncing the ball against the concrete wall of a public lavatory. Hannah is grateful that the children seem oblivious of ugly graffiti scrawled on the wall.

  Mommy means: hoping the children won’t be bored, restless, unhappy, clamor to go home early.

  Mommy means: hoping to please the children’s father. Somehow.

  Oh but where is he? Hannah’s lover?

  Nervously Hannah has been watching the parking lot, the road that leads to the parking lot, one or two vehicles have turned in since her arrival, neither belonging to Y.K.

  He has borrowed a car from a friend, he’d said. He has no car of his own in Detroit.

  Calmly Hannah thinks—I am waiting for my lover in this place, at this time. I will introduce my children to him.

  Thinking how soon she will be leaving her familiar life in Far Hills and living in places new to her. And in those places Hannah will discover a self new to her, not her own, a transmogrified being.

  I am still young. I have scarcely lived half my life.

  Until now, I have been waiting.

  (But how realistic is it, that Hannah can bring Conor and Katya with her? Wherever Y.K. takes her? He has spoken of living in Europe, of traveling. Hannah has no clear idea how others manage divorce.)

  (He will help her, of course. He seems to have a plan …)

  The children’s laughter is distracting. Mostly it is Conor’s laughter, laced with cruelty. Since Katya’s illness Conor has not been so protective of her as Hannah would wish, he seems eager to mock her relative weakness, frailty. He has made Katya scramble for the ball rolling along the cracked and weedy walkway into a pile of debris.

  Conor’s mocking laughter reminds Hannah of the headlines in the Free Press. She’d been unprepared to see Bernard Rusch’s photograph on the front page, the astonishing headlines. Son of, heir to, “person of interest” not yet a “suspect.”

  So a suicide note was discovered. Hannah wonders what the note said.

  Someone will know, word will get out. The attorneys will know. Spreading like wildfire in Bloomfield, surely.

  Forced to think again of Christina. Sick-sinking horror of Christina Rusch’s death at the hands of her own brute son.

  Though Bernard Rusch had (evidently) killed his father, and the Irish housekeeper, a woman obviously well-known to him for years, it is Christina’s death that most obsesses Hannah as unspeakable.

  Wes had wished to think a Black man, or Black men, had committed the murders. But Hannah had known immediately: the (white) son.

  Is it possible that Bernard Rusch is Babysitter, too? Perhaps his parents had suspected him, that is why he killed them …

  Hannah has speculated what connection the ponytailed boy—Mike—Mikey—could have had with Bernard Rusch. For Hannah is certain, he’d been at Rusch’s house the day he’d come to hers.

  He’d seemed to know that the Hayden boy was going to be discovered by police. He’d boasted of TV news.

  And through the ponytailed boy, what connection Y.K. might have had with Bernard Rusch …

  She will ask him, Hannah thinks. If she dares.

  Glancing at her watch: Y.K. is twelve minutes late. Once a person is late, later follows swiftly.

  Bright chill autumn air. Wind high in the trees, a flurry of falling leaves. Smell of wet earth, leaves. The sky above Lake Michigan is layered with clouds like wetted tissues. Another time, nervously, Hannah glances at her watch: only a minute has passed.

  “Mom-my! Conor threw the ball into the mud.”

  Katya cries plaintively, Conor giggles. Hannah calls to the children to just leave the ball where it is, they have plenty of balls at home.

  Katya cries, “It was my ball, I found it.”

  Mommy means: refereeing children. Nonstop.

  Mommy means: trying to love your children equally.

  At last, when Hannah is about to give up, gather the children, and trek back disconsolately to the car in the parking lot, return to Far Hills chastened and nursing a secret wound, a gleaming red sports car rends the dun-colored scene like a sudden flash of Technicolor in a black-and-white film: turning into the parking lot, capturing Conor’s attention at once.

  Like a sleek rocket, slung low to the ground, as out of place among the other ordinary vehicles as an exotic vulpine predator among dumb-grazing sheep.

  Y.K.!—Hannah stares transfixed as her lover climbs out of the sleek red car, long-legged, not (evidently) limping, tall, lithe, handsome in a casual corduroy jacket, trousers, on his head a khaki-colored cap that gives him a military look. Hannah stares as if she has never seen this man before, a wave of utter weakness, helplessness passes over her. She laughs with delight, how well Y.K. has chosen a car to arouse the admiration of a seven-year-old boy!

  Seemingly oblivious of Hannah, Y.K. makes his somber way toward the trailhead as if intent upon hiking. His stride is purposeful, he is wearing hiking shoes. He has sighted Hannah but doesn’t wave to her, their meeting must seem to be accidental.

  Hannah has taken Katya’s hand, without haste she is walking with Katya on the walkway perpendicular to the path Y.K. is taking. Eagerly her eyes leap to the man, but he has not looked at her, what anguish if he doesn’t acknowledge Hannah, if this is all a fiction, a fantasy; clearly this person is a stranger, in this unfamiliar setting Hannah wouldn’t readily recognize him, nor would he recognize her.