Marcus Reed turned onto Larkspur Court at twelve minutes past nine with the radio off and the window cracked, because after three hours on I-75 the silence felt like something he had earned. The inspection in Chattanooga had run long and then ended all at once, the way they sometimes did, the client’s engineer shaking his hand in a parking deck that smelled of wet concrete and exhaust and saying, Well, I think we’ve seen enough, and so instead of the hotel and the breakfast meeting he had gotten back in the car and driven south through the dark, thinking about his own bed, thinking about the weight of his son asleep down the hall, thinking about nothing at all.
The cul-de-sac was quiet in the way of September in Fayette County, the heat still sitting on the lawns after dark, the sprinklers ticking on their timers, a television flickering blue behind the Halvorsens’ front curtains. Somebody’s dog barked twice and gave up. Marcus slowed for the curve and saw his own house, and the first thing he noticed was that the garage door was open and every light in it was on.
The second thing he noticed was Danielle’s Highlander, backed halfway down the driveway with the liftgate raised, and in the cargo space the two big gray suitcases they had bought for London three summers ago, and beside them, tipped on its side, Caleb’s small green roller bag with the cartoon stegosaurus printed on the front.
He thought, before he thought anything else, that someone had died. Danielle’s mother. Grace was seventy-one and had a heart that her doctors in Croydon described, with British understatement, as tired. He thought of the call coming in while he was driving with his phone face down on the passenger seat, and of Danielle packing alone, and he felt the guilt of it before he had even put the car in park.
He was still unbuckling his seat belt when the front door opened and Caleb came out of the house at a dead run.
He was barefoot. He was wearing his flannel pajamas, the long-sleeved ones with the rockets on them that Danielle’s mother had sent last Christmas and that he had worn exactly twice because they made him too hot. He was holding something flat and blue against his chest with both arms, the way the old women at Marcus’s mother’s church held their Bibles, and his face in the porch light was wet and crumpled and eight years old.
"Dad! Please don’t let Mom take me!"
Marcus was out of the car before he knew he had opened the door. Caleb hit him at the hip and held on, and Marcus put one hand on the back of his son’s head and felt the heat coming off his scalp, the sweat in his hair. Over Caleb’s shoulder he saw Danielle come out of the garage and stop at the edge of the light. She had a tote bag over one arm and her car keys in her hand, and she was very still.
"Caleb, slow down. Take you where?"