"No, and I swear I smell it."

"There's only one solution."

"Cover it with a rug?"

"No." Ellen crossed to the window and opened it, then fumbled around for the metal slides and threw open the storm windows, letting in a blast of fresh, snowy air that somehow felt cleansing. "I'm going to rip up the whole d.a.m.n floor."

"You mean do it yourself?" Connie smiled, surprised.

"Sure. How hard can it be? It's just destruction. Any idiot can destroy something." Ellen went to the base cabinet, found her orange plastic toolbox, and set it out on top of the stove, trying not to notice that one burner was missing. She opened the toolbox and took out her hammer. "I'm no contractor, but the sharp end looks like it could do the trick. If I start now, I can get it done by tonight."

"You want to do it now now?"

"Why not? One way or the other, this floor is getting thrown away. I don't want it in my house another minute." Ellen took a gulp of fresh air, wielded the hammer, and bent down over one of the gasoline stains. She raised the hammer high over her head and brought its sharp end down with all her might.

Crack! The edge of the hammer splintered the wood, but unfortunately embedded itself there. The edge of the hammer splintered the wood, but unfortunately embedded itself there.

"Oops." Ellen yanked on the handle of the hammer, and its head came free, splintering the wood. "Looks like it works, but at this rate, I'll be finished by next year."

"I have a better idea." Connie stepped around her, opened the door to the bas.e.m.e.nt, and went downstairs, and by the time she returned, Ellen had destroyed only part of a single floorboard. She looked up to see Connie hoisting a crowbar like the Statue of Liberty on This Old House This Old House.

"Way to go!" Ellen said. "I didn't even know I had one of those. Thanks." She rose, delighted, and reached for the crowbar, but Connie held it tight.

"I'll use this. You use the hammer. We'll get this done together. It'll go twice as fast, and besides, I wanna destroy something, too."

"Isn't there a football game?" Ellen asked, touched.

"No matter." Connie got down on her hands and knees, then wedged the end of the crowbar underneath the splintered floor. "Mark will have to win without me this time."

Tears came to Ellen's eyes, and she didn't know what to say. For once, she didn't say anything. She got back down on her hands and knees, raised her hammer, and the two women worked together for the next several hours, grimly destroying the evidence of a nightmare, with the only tools they had on hand.

A hammer, a crowbar, and the human heart.

Chapter Eighty-eight.

After Connie had gone home, Ellen piled the last of the broken floor-boards on her back porch because reporters were still camped out front. She stepped back inside the kitchen, shut the door against the cold, and closed the window, breathing in deeply. The gasoline smell was gone, but the subfloor was a mess. Removing the top boards had only exposed the older floor beneath, and she hadn't been able to pull out all the nails. They popped up here and there, making an obstacle course for Oreo Figaro, who walked gingerly to his food dish.

Ellen crossed to the refrigerator, careful not to step on a nail or a cat, and opened the door. She was about to reach for a bottle of water when her hand stopped in midair. Staring her in the face was the Pyrex bowl of lime green Jell-O, with a shiny cavern dug in the middle.

It's good, Mommy!

She grabbed the water bottle and slammed the door closed, determined to get through the rest of the day. The house had fallen quiet, a hollow echo of how she felt. She checked the clock on the wall-2:25. Odd that Marcelo hadn't called, and she had yet to call her father. She left the room with the water, twisted off the cap, and took a slug, then went into the living room, hearing only the sound of her footsteps on the floor. She found her purse and dug inside for her BlackBerry, but it wasn't there. She must've dropped it in Marcelo's car.

She looked up, aggravated, and through the windows she could see a commotion on the sidewalk. Reporters and photographers cl.u.s.tered around a taxi pulling up in front of the house, and in the next second, emerging from the crowd was her father.

Dad?

Ellen ran to the door as he waved off the press, taking the arm of an attractive woman in a chic white wool coat, probably his new wife, whose name Ellen had almost forgotten.

"Honey, what the h.e.l.l?" her father asked, stepping inside, his hazel eyes round with disbelief. He stamped snow from his loafers. "This is crazy!"

"I know, it's awful." Ellen introduced herself and extended her hand to his wife. "Barbara, right?"

"h.e.l.lo, Ellen." Barbara smiled with genuine warmth, her lipstick fresh and her teeth white and even. She was pet.i.te with smallish features, tasteful makeup, and highlighted hair coiffed to her chin. "Sorry we have to meet in these circ.u.mstances."

"Why didn't you call?" her father interrupted. "Thank G.o.d for the Internet, or we wouldn't have known a d.a.m.n thing."

"It just got so crazy, all of it."

"We're in the hotel, and I went online to check the scores, and there's my daughter's picture and my grandson's gone! We got on the next plane."

"Why don't you go sit down, and I'll explain everything." Ellen gestured them toward the couch, but her father waved her off, agitated and acting oddly like a much older man.

"We came straight from the airport. I've been calling your cell."

"Sorry, I left it in a car." Ellen had to catch them up but she wasn't going to begin with Marcelo. "It's been difficult, Dad."

"I can imagine," Barbara said with obvious concern, but her father was distracted to the point of disorientation.

"So where's Will?" He looked around the living room, his head wobbling slightly. "Is he really not here?"

"He's really not here." Ellen stayed calm, only because he was so upset. She'd never seen him so shaken, so out of control.

"That can't be. Do the cops have him or what?"

"He's with his father, and they're already talking to shrinks and pediatricians, so I'm praying he'll be okay."

"Where is he? Where'd they take him?"

"He's in a hotel in town."

"I want to see him." Her father set his jaw, the soft jowls bracketing his mouth like a bulldog's.

"We can't, Dad."

"What do you mean, we can't?" Her father's eyes flared. "He's my only grandchild. He's my grandson grandson."

"If we try to see him, they'll get a restraining order. I'm hoping that if we work with them, then we can-"

"That can't be legal! Grandparents have rights!" Her father's face reddened with emotion. "I'm calling a lawyer. I won't put up with this. n.o.body takes my grandchild away from me!"

"I have a lawyer, Dad. He says what they're doing is legal."

"Then you didn't get yourself a good enough mouthpiece." Her father jabbed his finger toward her chest, but Barbara put her hand on his jacket sleeve.

"Don, don't yell at her. We talked about this. You know what she's been through."

"But they can't take him away!" Her father threw up his hands, his expression caught between bewilderment and pain. "I go away for one minute and when I come home, my grandson is gone? How can this be legal?"

"Dad, relax." Ellen stepped forward. "Sit down, have a cup of coffee, and I'll tell you the story. You'll understand the situation better."

"I understand the situation just fine!" Her father whirled around, his finger pointing again. "I remember when you came to see me, you thought that kid in the picture was Will. So I got it wrong. Ya happy, now?"

"What?" Ellen asked, stricken.

"Don!" Barbara shouted, so loudly that he stood stunned for a moment. "Shut up. Right now." She faced him head-on, despite her tiny frame. "I can't believe what I'm seeing. I can't believe this is the man I just married. I know you're a better man than this."

"Wha?" her father said, but accusation had left his tone.

"This isn't about you, or even Will." Barbara raised a manicured hand. "This is about your daughter, your only daughter. Start focusing on the child you have, instead of the one you don't."

"But she shouldn'ta said anything. She shoulda just shut up!"

Ellen felt slapped, and Barbara's mouth dropped open.

"Don, she did what any good mother would do. She did what was right for her child, even though it cost her."

Ellen recovered, listening. Barbara had given the clearest and best statement of why she'd followed up on that d.a.m.n white card. She'd never thought of it exactly that way.

Her father's gaze shifted from Barbara to Ellen, suddenly very sad. He raked his thin hair with trembling fingers. "I'm sorry, El. I didn't mean it."

"I know, Dad."

"It's just that Will was my ... chance."

"What do you mean?" Ellen asked, mystified, and tears came to her father's eyes. The only other time she'd seen him cry was at her mother's funeral, and the sight caught her by the throat.

"He was my chance, El. My second chance."

Ellen touched his arm, sensing what he'd say before he said it. She gave him a big hug, and he eased into her arms, with a little moan.

"Everything I did wrong with you, I was gonna do right with him. I wanted to make it up to you. To your mother."

Ellen thought her heart would break, and in the next minute, her eyes brimmed with tears, and she found herself crying like a baby in her father's arms.

"I'm so sorry, honey," he whispered as Ellen sobbed and breathed in his expensive aftershave, and she drew real comfort from his embrace in a way she never had before. The deepest pain in her heart eased just a little, and she let herself feel how very powerful is something so simple, yet so profound, as a father's love.

And she thanked G.o.d he was alive.

Chapter Eighty-nine.

It wasn't until they had gone and Ellen was rinsing their coffee mugs that the phone rang in the kitchen. She turned off the faucet, crossed the room, and checked caller ID, which showed the newspaper's main number. She picked up. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Ellen?" Marcelo asked, worried. "Are you okay? I've been calling your cell."

"I think I left it in your car. I was going to call you, but my father and my new stepmother just left."

"How are you?"

"Good, okay." Ellen glanced over and saw that the Coffmans still weren't home, their house dark. "You probably want me to look at that story, huh?

"Only if you feel up to it."

"I'm not sure."

"Then let it go. I loved what you wrote for the homicide piece."

"Good, thanks." Ellen felt a warmth she couldn't deny.

"I'll be done here around nine. Happily, there's news besides you."

"You'd never know it from the crowd outside."

"Would you like company tonight? I don't think you should be alone."

"I'd like that."

"I'll be there." Marcelo's voice softened. "Take care of yourself, 'til then."

"See you." Ellen hung up and left the kitchen by the other exit, feeling an odd sensation when she reached the upstairs landing. It was exactly the spot where Carol had set Will down, before she'd made her final stand.

Ellen felt a tightness in her chest, then forced herself to step over the spot and climb the stairs. She caught a glimpse of the scene outside on the sidewalk, and the reporters were still there, smoking cigarettes and holding cups of take-out coffee against the cold. The afternoon sky spent its last hour before twilight descended, dropping purple and rose streaks behind the cedar shakes and satellite dishes, a suburban night in winter.

Ellen's clogs clattered on the wooden stair, echoing in the silent house, and she wondered how long she'd go on noticing every noise that she'd never noticed before. She lived in a house of echoes now. She'd have to exchange her clogs for slippers if she wanted to keep her sanity.

She reached the top of the stair, which ended in front of Will's room, and faced his door, which was closed. Not that it helped. b.u.t.terfly stickers, scribbled drawings, and a WILL'S ROOM WILL'S ROOM license plate covered the door, and Ellen reached almost reflexively for the doork.n.o.b, then wondered if she should go in. license plate covered the door, and Ellen reached almost reflexively for the doork.n.o.b, then wondered if she should go in.

"Mrrp?" Oreo Figaro chirped, rubbing against her jeans, his tail curled around her leg.

"Don't ask," she told him, twisting the doork.n.o.b. She opened the door, and the Cheerios-and-Play-Doh smell caught her by the throat. She willed herself not to cry, and her gaze traveled around the room, dark except for the white rectangle of the window shade, bright from the snow and the TV klieg lights outside. She didn't know how long she stood there, but it was long enough for the daylight to leak away, so stuffed animals dematerialized into shadowy blobs and the spines of books thinned to straight black lines. Stars glowed faintly from the ceiling, and the WILL constellation took her back in time, to the countless nights she'd held him before bed, reading to him, talking or just listening to his adorable up-and-down cadence, the music of his stories from school or swimming, told in his little-boy register, like the sweetest of piccolos.

She watched almost numbly as Oreo Figaro leapt noiselessly to the foot of Will's bed, where he always slept, curled next to a floppy stuffed bunny whose ears were silhouetted in the light from the window shade. Will had gotten that bunny at a party that Courtney had thrown for her at work, when she adopted him. Sarah Liu had given it to him.

Anger flickered in Ellen's chest. Sarah, who was supposed to be her colleague. Sarah, who would later sell both of them out, for money. Sarah, who stole from her the choice about when or whether to give Will up. He could be here right now, home where he belonged, cuddled up with his cat, instead of in a strange hotel room, lost and confused, in all kinds of pain, going home to a house without a mother.

"You b.i.t.c.h!" Ellen heard herself shout. In one movement, she lunged into the room, grabbed the stuffed bunny, and hurled it into the bookshelves, where it hit a toy car. Oreo Figaro leapt from the bed, startled.