“And the battery?” I asked.

“Fully charged,” she said. “It can record for up to eight hours continuously.”

The day dragged on, each hour marked by the slow chiming of the grandfather clock in the dining room.

I tried to keep busy, polishing the silver, dusting the bookshelves, doing anything to keep my hands from shaking.

Caroline remained calm, spent most of the afternoon in her room, studying her textbooks as if this were any other Tuesday.

By six o’clock, the wind had picked up, rattling the kitchen shutters.

I prepared a pot of decaffeinated coffee and set out three cups on a silver tray.

“He’s here,” Caroline said, her voice coming from the front window.

I walked to the hallway and looked out.

The headlights of Thomas’s late-model SUV swept across the gravel, illuminating the wet hydrangea bushes by the porch.

He parked, the engine died, and the headlights flickered off, plunging the yard back into darkness.

The car door slammed shut.

A moment later, his heavy footsteps sounded on the porch, confident and hurried.