Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

Sarah stepped forward. “Do I need to call somebody? In other words, what are you doing in my kitchen?”

The woman in the suit picked up her briefcase, cleared off a small space on the kitchen counter, and opened it, produced a stack of documents. The answer was there in the papers, but the woman spoke anyway. “There’s no need to call anyone. In fact, I have sheriff’s deputies sitting in a squad car in the driveway. I’m hoping that it won’t be necessary to involve them, that we can manage everything that we need to do here and keep our focus on the larger issues.”

Sarah peered out the kitchen window to confirm that there was in fact a police interceptor sitting in the driveway, engine and signal lights running. Perhaps a neighbor had called the cops. Who knew? She told Gabriel to play in the den.

“You can put the TV back on. There are more cartoons,” she said. He turned to leave, and Sarah noticed that he was still carrying two mostly empty bottles. She pointed, and the woman in the suit stopped Gabriel, took the bottles from him.

Sarah turned back. “And just what are the larger issues?”

“The best interests of the child, of course.”

The perspective of the woman in the suit: the best interests of the child were easily determined by observation; the first step in protecting him would be to get him out of this house. That’s what the deputies were for, in the event that any of the persons on the premises decided to interfere. The paperwork in her hand and a laminated identification card and badge gave her name as Maura Valle, court-appointed special advocate, and she was there to take temporary custody of Gabriel, oversee his transfer into foster care for the evening and ensure his appearance the following morning in family court, where presumably a surviving family member would appear before the judge. The name of the family member was there somewhere in the paperwork, but the crash had called her away from her own dinner table, and she hadn’t really even had time to look over the temporary custody order for any other detail beyond the child’s name.

Now, looking around the kitchen, Maura hoped that this woman in front of her wasn’t a blood relative, would have no claim to the child. The kitchen looked as if a party had been going on for the better part of a few days (true), and the young woman—wearing jeans unsnapped at the waist and a man’s white T-shirt on top of a navy-blue bikini top—had all the appearances of being under the influence of alcohol and perhaps narcotics. Identifying the telltales of substance abuse was part of Maura’s training too, but she did not need any expert help to know a sad scene when she wandered into one. Food moldered in open containers, the house smelled as if something had recently burned, and beneath the cluster of nauseating odors in the kitchen was something rank enough to make Maura keep looking around for a forgotten pet.

“The best interests of the child?” the young woman said. “I would think the best interests of the child will be covered once he goes back to his mother. She should be here”—she checked her watch—“before too much longer. Ninety minutes tops.”

This was the worst part of the job, in Maura’s experience, having to tell people things they didn’t know. She often had to tell people their neighbors had reported them as potential abusers, that their stepdaughter had accused them of molestation. She knew it to be an exaggeration, but at that moment, she felt as if never once in six years of being a child advocate had she given someone good news, and now this woman clearly did not know. Maura was going to have to be the one to tell her.

“Could you tell me, please, how it is that you are acquainted with Mary Beth Blumenthal?” Maura asked.

“After you tell me how it’s any of your business.” Sarah returned to the busy work of cleaning the kitchen. She used the spray nozzle and began rinsing the sludge out of the sink.

“That is a card you don’t want to play. Trust me. I’ve got a reason to ask. I’m going to need to see some identification.”

Sarah found her purse among the countertop clutter and meekly handed over her driver’s license. “I work with her. We work at the Mike Renfro Agency. This is Mike’s house. Mike and MB are away for the holiday, and I’m watching her kid, but, like I said, I’m expecting her at any moment.”

Maura looked at the floor. No one had told this woman, at least no one from the airline. The answer popped into her head. They would have no reason to tell Sarah. They would be looking for a spouse, a blood relative.

When Sarah said it, I’m expecting her at any moment, this bureaucrat in the kitchen refused to meet her eyes, and the lack of eye contact told her the enormity of it. Maura could see the series of deductions as they registered on Sarah’s face, as her expression sagged with the demonstrable recognition that Mary Beth would not, in fact, walk through that door.

Gabriel returned to the kitchen carrying a stack of small plates, a handful of crumpled napkins. The two women went to him, and they both crouched in front of him, to his eye level. Maura knew that whatever words she could find to begin to explain the mysteries of death to a six-year-old boy would take away the unbridled brightness of childhood from his eyes, most likely forever.

Sarah thought, for her part, this was not her duty. Not what she signed up for. She let her legs go slack, sank to the floor. Jesus.

RICHARD HAD learned precious little from his past except that bad news needed to be delivered quickly, with a minimum of equivocation. Certainly she’d seen the news about the plane, Salt Lake City to Dallas. Just the facts. There had been a crash. His sister had been on the plane, but not his nephew. Cadence did not make Richard spell out the details. What more did she need to know, anyway? He’d given her the outline, thin on the specifics because he simply did not have any. Seventy-seven passengers and six crew. Tomorrow morning, Richard would get on a plane and fly to Dallas, and when he arrived, he would walk into his uncertain future.

Once she had said everything that a person was expected to say in these types of conversations, she found herself at a loss.

She felt encumbered by her body. It was something she didn’t want at the moment. It interfered with her thinking. The comfort she felt in Richard’s presence was a distraction. She loved the solid manliness that he presented—another thing she’d missed for the past seven weeks. He wasn’t the kind of guy to pose, and he certainly wasn’t going to shave his arms so he looked better at the gym. Still, she did not want to be thinking of his body, the comfort she took from being across from him. She hoped her being here would give him some peace. She wanted the crystallized thinking that came from adrenaline and movement and cold air in her lungs. She wanted to put her hands on Richard’s face and see if she could intuit his thoughts, like a Vulcan mind meld.

Cadence felt his pain would be impossible to measure. He rarely talked about his sister except to identify her as the only other living member of his family, as if he often forgot entirely about his nephew. She was used to looking at Richard, and just from his face she could tell how serious the wound was, how invasive a treatment would be required. Now she had nothing for him, nothing except this body, and so she slipped out of her side of the booth and onto the seat beside Richard, and once she was there, he began to speak.

Her first thought was of the boy, and she did not even have to ask the question, because now, for the first time since she’d known him, his concern for the boy was primary and all-consuming, and she could see it.