Now, after a few moments, Cathy spoke again. It was the last thing she said to me before the phone rang, before the lies and the violence and all the craziness started.

She said, "Have you decided yet what you're going to do about the house?"

It was my mother's house she was talking about. My mother-my poor old crazy mother-had finally died about eight months before. Her will had just cleared probate, and now her house had to be sold so my brother and I could split the money. Someone had to go back east and clean the place out and arrange to put it on the market. Cathy's question: Was I going to go now, or wait for my brother to turn up so he could help me?

We'll never know what I would've answered. Even I don't know. Just then, the phone rang inside the house.

"I'll get it," I said.

My children's voices, the sough and birdsong of the world outside, were muffled as the sliding glass patio door whisked and thudded shut behind me. I walked two steps across our back room, our family room, to where the phone sat beside the stereo. I picked up the handset before the third ring.

"Hello?"

"Is this Jason Harrow?" It was a woman, a voice I didn't recognize.

"Yes?"

I heard her give a quick breath, a sort of bitter laugh. "It's funny to hear you talk after all this time."

"I'm sorry. Who is this?" I still didn't know. My mind was racing, trying to figure it out.

"This is Lauren Wilmont," she said. "Formerly Lauren Goldberg. Formerly your girlfriend, if that's what I was."

It was a strange feeling. Standing there with the phone in my hand, with the family room around me and that voice I barely remembered speaking in my ear.