She put her purse on the hood of the Jag, held the gun in front of her, like the handgun instructor had shown her. She was an athlete, and a professional athlete at that: swimming, dance, martial arts, weights, Pilates, yoga. The hard stuff: her body control was nearly perfect. She’d shot the eyes out of the gun- instructor’s bad-guy target.

He’d been mildly impressed, but only mildly. A cop for most of his life, he’d told her that every shooting he’d ever seen had been a screwup.

“The question is not whether you can hit something at seven yards. The question is whether you can sort out all the problems, when you’ve got a loaded gun in your hand,” he’d said, a rehearsed speech that might have been written on a 3x5 card. “You have no time, but you have to figure out what’s happening-what’s going on. To shoot or not to shoot: it all comes down to a tenth of a second, in the dark. You don’t want to shoot your kid or a neighbor. You don’t want to not shoot a junkie with a butcher knife coming for your throat.”

THERE WOULDN’T BE a neighbor in the house. The neighborhood was private, standoffish. People drew their friends from their businesses, from their schools, not from the street. The housekeeper was long gone.

Her daughter? Frances had the security code but she always called ahead.

She called out: “Francie?” No response. Again, louder. “Fran? Are you there?” Starting to feel foolish, now. Then she remembered what the gun instructor had told her. “About the time you start to feel like an idiot, that’s when they’ll get you. If you’re scared enough to have the gun out, then the situation is serious enough that you can’t be abashed.”

She remembered the word. Abashed. Was she abashed?

SHE WAS BACK at the door. Kept the muzzle of the gun pointing straight ahead, called out, “Frances, I’ve got a gun, because I’m scared. Don’t jump out, if this is a joke. Frances?”