Quaid listened to the grandmother's voicemail with flask in hand, fingertips digging the corner of one eye.

"...looking for the louse—I don't know as I got the correct number. Quaid? Quaid Rafferty! Listen up. My granddaughter's missing and I know it's got to do with you. You got one shred of decency in that degenerate body of yours, you'll come down here and tell these children what's become of their mother..."

She ranted another full minute, casting aspersions on Quaid's upbringing, threatening various Depression-era banes. Something clattered in the background. A pot? Zach's skateboard off the stair rail?

Durwood was busy scouring the Roche Rivard blueprints Steed had passed them on the sly from his AmDye spies, plotting a rescue—the most daring rescue in the history of Third Chance Enterprises, surely—and so, on a chilly Sunday afternoon, Quaid drove the Vanagon out to the New Jersey suburbs.

Karen answered the door.

"Mr. Rafferty!" she cried, pigtails bouncing. "Did you bring Mommy?"

Quaid patted her shoulder on the way inside. "Ah, no. I didn't."

She stayed in the open doorway, squinting out at the van. "Mommy enjoys surprises. I'm going to watch so she doesn't sneak up and trick me."

Zach stood with arms across at the foot of the stairs, leery.

Quaid said, "No tricks today. But hey, it's cold out—she'd want you back inside out of the weather." He gestured at the pink ribbon in her hair. "Tell me about that pretty bow of yours. Where'd you get it?"

It was a move he'd learned in politics, handy at rallies when dealing with constituents' small children. You pick out the most vibrant part of the kid's outfit—ask a question, give it a light tap.

Karen pulled at her bow, unraveling one braid. "For sure no Mommy?"

"For sure. But she'll be back soon, promise."

Quaid pulled the door closed. Karen continued to gaze out, such that the door nudged her gently back by the nose.

Unpaired shoes dotted the living room. A teetering stack of Reader's Digests made a kind of Leaning Tower of Pisa atop the coffee table. No fewer than a dozen of Karen's dioramas lined the fireplace. Quaid smelled socks and furnace and—deeper down—that skunky-piney scent of marijuana.

Zach saw his face change. "It's legal now."

"Not at fourteen it isn't," Quaid said.

"I'm fifteen."

Quaid crimped his brow.

"Last week," Zach said. "The day after Mom stopped coming home."

Quaid opened his mouth to say pot wasn't legal at fifteen either, but Zach had already disappeared up the stairs.

Karen said, "Is Mommy with Mr. Durwood?"

"Not right this second," Quaid said. "We're getting her soon, though. We're ju-uust about to go get her."

A smile bloomed on Karen's face, and Quaid figured he was clear.

The girl said, "Can I come?"

"Can you come?" he repeated. "Afraid not. It's a special trip. One-person kind of trip."

"So Mr. Durwood isn't going?"

"No, he—" Quaid broke off. He had drank too much in the van, psyching up for this, and lost a measure of verbal acuity. "I misspoke—Durwood is going. We're getting her together. Just the grownups."

Karen twirled on one foot, seeming to ponder what kind of trip would be off-limits to kids.

Quaid took a nip from his flask.

Now the marijuana smell rose to distraction, and Karen curdled her face.

"Zach's friends are stinky," she said. "I think they always forget their baths."

"I'm sure that's true," Quaid said. "Say, I haven't seen your great-grandmother. Where is she?"

"Napping."

"At four in the afternoon?"

"She gets tired. She is old as the hills."

Quaid felt too besieged to chuckle. The household felt like a plane sputtering on autopilot, drifting down after its human pilots parachuted out.

He left Karen to her dolls and hiked upstairs to Zach's room. Pressing his ear to the door, he heard video games intermingled with a cacophony of dopey giggles.

He plowed inside.

"The hell?" Zach said, fumbling a plastic and aluminum foil contraption as two puffy-eyed pals snapped out of slouches.

"This is how you step up when your mother's away?" Quaid said.

Zach hurriedly passed the contraption to a friend, who recoiled at the hot foil.

Quaid smeared his nose at the foulness. The three slack-a-teers had left microwave-pizza crusts on the bedspread. A soiled sweatshirt hung from one blade of a ceiling fan, rotating overhead like some slovenly bird.

"Eunice doesn't smell this?" Quaid said. "She lets you get away with this?"

"She thinks it's a science project," Zach said. "For homeschool."

Quaid disentangled one loafer from controller cords. "You guys need to get outside. I don't know what the teenage social scene looks like in the Anarchy, but this? Sitting around Mommy's house getting high? Not how you break out of virginhood."

One of Zach's friends piped up, "Who says we're virgins?"

"Nobody. Nobody has to—your actions say it loud and clear." Quaid stepped closer to Zach and lowered his voice. "Your little sister is probably out in the hall listening to every word. She sees you. She soaks it all in. For her sake, you need to man up in a hurry."

"Like you?" Zach said.

"That's right."

A friend said, "A man like you?"

"Again, yes." Quaid snapped his fingers before the kid's dull face. "Are you processing any of this? Did somebody pull the plug back there, unhook a cortex or two?"

Before any of the three could manage a comeback, the grandmother's shrill warble sounded through the bedroom door. "Is Science class almost over in there? You woke me up with that smell. Seems like those candle wicks must be about burned through."

The teenagers erupted in chuckle-snorts. One tumbled off the bed.

Zach called, "Sorry, Great-Grandma. Just a couple experiments left..."

Quaid opened the door.

Eunice, after a double-take at his presence, turned out the wrinkled points of her elbows. "Why, will wonders never cease? The louse showed up. The louse who lost my granddaughter."

"Take it easy," Quaid said, lowering his eyes for discretion. "Nobody lost Molly."

"Then where is she? Why isn't she here?" If anything, Eunice got louder. "Where'd she go?"

Quaid guided her to the hallway and confirmed Karen was downstairs. "Durwood and I know where she is, where she's being held. We'll get her out soon."

"Shouldn't have gotten her in in the first place. Shoulda done your own danged dirty work."

Quaid couldn't argue there. "We feel lousy—I feel lousy. But we will make this right."

Eunice wouldn't be appeased, yelling until her dentures rattled, paying no mind to whether or not the children heard.

"You put my Molly on the hook," the octogenarian said. "She would've never joined up if it weren't for you. If you weren't involved."

At every "you," her dimples—which were so cute on Molly—deepened starkly and turned her face into a pocked wad of loathing.

"We're doing all we can," Quaid said. "I don't know what else I can say or offer."

"I'll tell you what you can offer." Eunice thrust a bony finger toward the front door. "You can get right on outta here."

"You asked me to come. I came."

"And now you can go!" She bared her teeth menacingly, a narrow chasm opening her gums and denture plate.

Quaid backpedaled down the stairs with hands up. Karen and even Zach, peeking out from his room, were watching the confrontation. Quaid had been sleeping poorly—awake at two a.m. when Durwood returned from his nightly patrols—and had precious little will to navigate Eunice's wrath.

That soft couch in the tanning salon lobby would feel great right about now. The couch and his flask.

Quaid was just sizing up an adieu, something along the lines of "Call me when some measure of sanity reappears at this address" when he caught sight of the pictures in the hall—a framed sequence of Molly with big hair in high school, then Molly at her humble wedding, then Molly holding Zach as a baby.

The photographs transported Quaid. Molly's eyes changed through the sequence, but the one constant was hope. At each of these big moments, she had believed great things lay before her. He thought of how hard she'd fought to be accepted by the Mice. How hard she fought for her kids. The ordeal she'd endured with her ex-husband. Biographers weren't going to fight it out for the privilege of telling Molly McGill's life story, but she sure had scrapped for every inch of it.

He knew she'd thought of becoming a psychology professor. Maybe she would have—if not for the detour of McGill Investigators.

The detour he'd encouraged.

Those big green eyes bored into him. This is my life. This—what you're standing in the middle of.

Quaid stopped backpedaling. Eunice's invective continued, but he stopped listening. He walked to Zach's room, swept up the drugs and associated paraphernalia, and dumped it in the trash—all but one bong.

"This," he told the grandmother, holding up the apparatus, "is not a candle. No more of these."

Zach and friends reached forward weakly as Quaid chucked it too.

"Karen." He marched downstairs and pointed to the fireplace. "We're done with dioramas. You need something to do, I want you reading those Curious George books."

The girl nodded, eyes wide at Quaid's vigor.

"Because your mom will be back soon, and I want her to see how hard you've been working." Quaid's phone buzzed in an inner pocket of his sportcoat. He ignored it. "Now before I go, we're gonna eat together. A regular family sit-down."

He singled out Zach's friends with his gaze. "The word that should've jumped out at you there was family."

The slack-a-teers looked back vacuously.

"Scram," he said. "Go home and eat an apple. Don't return."

They slinked off. Zach bolted up as though to object, but stopped when he saw Quaid's face—which had lost any trace of playfulness.

The door closed, Quaid walked to the TV and switched off the reality-court show Eunice had just started watching.

"You all need to hear a few things," he began. "Your mother—Eunice, your daughter—is in a bit of a pickle."

With the kids hugging their elbows, Quaid talked. He fielded every concern. Was Mom in jail? Was she alive? If she was coming back, would she bring souvenirs?

Why was Mr. Durwood always so quiet when he came over now?

Quaid answered with as much candor as the questions permitted, drawing on his extensive repertoire of evasions.

Then he asked Eunice what she had planned for dinner.

"Roast is always nice," she said dreamily.

Quaid smelled nothing from the kitchen. It was four o'clock. "Got any quicker ideas?"

The old woman's expression wilted. "Pasta. Sauce from a jar."

"Sold," Quaid said. "I'll boil the water."