“Ya gotta ashess”—he pauses, laughs, then repeats carefully—“assess your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.”

Clay trips a little on the pavement and Mom gives a low laugh. “Easy, honey.”

“Sorry—those stones kinda got away from me there.” They halt, leaning together in the darkness, swaying slightly. “You’d better drive.”

“Of course,” Mom says. “Just give me those keys.”

Much chuckling while she searches for them in his jacket pockets—oh erk—and I just want to be home.

Mom starts the car with a roar, VROOM, and then giggles in surprise as though cars never make that sound.

“Actually, sugar, better give me the keys,” Clay tells her.

“I’ve got it,” Mom says. “You had four glasses to my three.”

“Maybe,” Clay says. “I might could have done.”

“I just love your Southern phrases,” Mom murmurs.

Time hazes. I slide down in my seat, stretching my legs out over an uncomfortable pile of Grace Reed signs and boxes of campaign flyers, tilting my eyes against the hard leather padding under the window. I watch the highway lights, my eyelids sinking, then the dimmer streetlights as the roads get smaller and smaller, closer to home.

“Take Shore Road,” Clay tells her softly. “Less traffic. Nearly there now, Gracie.”

The window glass is chilly against my cheek, the only cool thing in the warm car. Other headlights flash by for a while, then fade away. Finally, I see by the glint of the moon on the open water that we’re passing McGuire Park. I remember being there with Jase, lying on the sun-warmed rock in the river, then my lids slowly close, the hum of the engine like Mom’s vacuum cleaner, a familiar lullaby.

BLAM.

My nose smacks the seat in front of me, so hard that stars dazzle against my eyes, and my ears ring.

“Oh my God!” Mom says in a high panicky voice scarier than the sudden jolt. She slams on the brakes.

“Back up, Grace.” Clay’s voice is level and firm.

“Mom? Mom! What happened?”

“Oh my God,” Mom repeats. She always freaks out about dings in her paint job. There’s a sudden whoosh of cool night air as Clay opens the passenger-side door, climbs out. A second later, he’s back.

“Grace. Reverse. Now. Nothing happened, Samantha. Go back to sleep.”

I catch a flash of his profile, arm around Mom’s neck, fingers in her hair, prodding her. “Reverse and pull away now,” he repeats.

The car jolts backward, jerks to a halt.

“Grace. Pull it together.” The car revs forward and to the left. “Just get us back home.”

“Mom?”

“It’s nothing, sweetheart. Go to sleep. Hit a little bump in the road. Go back to sleep,” Mom calls, her voice sharp.

And I do. She might still be talking, but I’m just so tired. When Tracy and I were younger, Mom sometimes used to drive us down to Florida for winter vacation, instead of flying. She liked to stop in Manhattan, in Washington, in Atlanta, stay in bed-and-breakfasts, poke around antiques stores along the way. I was always so impatient to get to the sand and the dolphins that I tried to sleep every single hour we were in the car. I feel like that now. I sink into soft blackness so absolute, I can barely drag myself out when Mom says, “Samantha. We’re home. Go on to bed.” She jiggles my arm, roughly enough that it hurts, and I drag myself upstairs, collapse on my mattress, too weary to take off my dress or dive under the covers. I just embrace nothingness.

My cell buzzes insistently. I shoved it under my pillow as usual. Now I hunt for it, half-asleep, my fingers clutching and closing on bunches of the sheets while the buzzing goes on and on and on, relentless. Finally I locate it.

“Sam?” Jase’s voice, hoarse, almost unrecognizable. “Sam!”

“Hmm?”

“Samantha!”

His voice is loud, jarring. I jerk the cell away from my ear.

“What? Jase?”

“Sam. We, uh, we need you. Can you come over?”

I crawl across the bed, blearily check my digital clock.

1:16 a.m.

What?

“Now?”

“Now. Please. Can you come now?”

I haul myself out of bed, yank off my dress, pull on shorts and a T-shirt, flip-flops, climb out the window, down the trellis. I glance quickly back at the house, but Mom’s bedroom lights are off, so I run through the light rain across the grass, to the Garretts’.

Where all the lights—the driveway, porch, kitchen lights—blaze. So out of the ordinary at this time of night that I stumble to a halt in the driveway.

“Samantha!” Andy’s voice calls from the kitchen door. “Is that you? Jase said you’d come.”

She’s silhouetted in the doorway, surrounded by smaller shadows. Duff, Harry, George, Patsy in Andy’s arms? At this hour? What’s going on?

“Daddy.” Andy’s holding back tears. “Something happened to Daddy. Mom got a call.” Her face crumples. “She went to the hospital with Alice.” She throws herself into my arms. “Jase went too. He said you’d be here to take care of us.”

“Okay. Okay, let’s go inside,” I say. Andy’s pulled back, taking deep breaths, trying to get hold of herself. The little ones watch, wide-eyed and bewildered. The frozen expression on George’s face is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to look at. All his imagined disasters, and he never imagined this.

Chapter Thirty-nine

In the light of the kitchen, all the children are blinking, sleepy and disoriented. I try to think what Mrs. Garrett would do to rally everyone, and can only come up with making popcorn. So I do that. And hot chocolate, even though the air, despite the rain, is stifling as an electric blanket. George perches on the counter next to me as I stir chocolate powder into milk. “Mommy puts the chocolate in first,” he reproves, squinting at me in the brightness of the overhead light.

This is no doubt a good idea, as I’m stuck with grainy lumps of powder I’m trying to mash against the side of the pot. Mom makes hot cocoa with some fancy chocolate shavings from Ghirardelli’s in San Francisco. They melt more easily.

“We don’t have any whipped cream.” Harry’s glum. “There’s no point to hot chocolate without whipped cream.”