As they drove down from the prison, Molly watched the road signs. Finally they left the Merritt Parkway at the Lake Avenue exit. It’s all familiar, of course, but I don’t remember much about the drive to the prison, she thought. I only remember the weight of the chains, and that the handcuffs were digging into my wrists. As she sat in the car now, she looked straight ahead and felt rather than saw Philip Matthews’s sideward glances at her.

She answered his unasked question. “I feel strange,” she said slowly. “No-‘empty’ is a better word.”

“I’ve told you this before: it was a mistake to keep the house, and a bigger one to go back to it,” he said. “And it’s also a mistake not to let your parents come up and be with you now.”

Molly continued to stare straight ahead. The sleet was beginning to coat the windshield faster than the wipers could remove it. “I meant what I said to those reporters. I feel that now that this is over, living at home again I may recover my memory of every detail of that night. Philip, I didn’t kill Gary -I just couldn’t have. I know the psychiatrists think I’m in denial about what happened, but I’m certain they’re wrong. But even if it turned out they are right, I’d find a way to live with it. Not knowing is the worst.”

“Molly, just suppose your memory is accurate, that you found Gary injured and bleeding. That you went into shock, and that your memory of that night will eventually come back to you. Do you realize that if you are right, and you do remember, then you’ll become a threat to the person who did kill him? And that the killer may even now view you as a very real threat, since you’ve just announced that you feel that once you’re home you may remember more about another person being in the house that night?”