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and my family, but I sat and watched as he went up to a uniformed policeman standing in front of my house. I saw Levine talking to the policeman and the policeman answer. I saw Levine's shoulders slump, his body sag. He
turned and looked at me and then turned back to the policeman. For a long time he simply stood there. Finally he walked back toward the van.

    As he approached, a wave of panic came over me. I didn't want him to reach me, ever. I was safe in the van. The windows were rolled up; the doors were closed. If I could sit in the van forever, then nothing would ever touch me.
    Levine opened the door and slid into the driver's seat. For a while neither of us said or did anything. We just sat. Finally he turned in his seat and looked me in the eye. "Your father is dead. He shot himself."
    I stared at him. "That's not true."
    "Shane," he said, but I didn't wait to hear any more.
    I jumped out of the van and raced toward the house. A policeman tried to stop me. I pushed right past him. That's when I saw my mom. She had her arm around Marian. When our eyes met, her face seemed to crumple. Still hugging Marian, she reached out toward me. I went to her and she hugged me.
    When she let me go, Rausch came over to us. I wanted to hit him the instant I saw him. I thought Mom would tell him to go straight to hell, but she didn't.
    "I called the Ramada Inn over by Northgate," he said. "I got you a suite. A couple of small rooms, a little kitchen area. If you'd like, I could take you there now."
    "Thank you," she said. "I would like to leave, at least for tonight."
    "Would you like me to have an officer pack some clothes for you?"
    Mom shook her head. "No. We'll do it."

    Rausch nodded and stepped aside.
    "Now listen to me, both of you," Mom said. "I want you to go up to your rooms and pack what you'll need for a couple of days. As soon as you have it, come right back out. Don't take too long, okay?"
    There were two policemen sitting on our sofa in the front room, a police photographer in the kitchen, and a medic coming down the stairs. As soon as they saw us, they stopped talking and seemed to try to melt into the walls.
    Upstairs I saw a piece of yellow tape across the doorway leading to my father's study. His body was probably still in there. That's why we had to leave so quickly. Mom didn't want us to see them take his body out, and I didn't want to see it either.
    I went into my room and quickly grabbed two pairs of pants, a couple of shirts, underwear, socks. I stuffed everything into an old duffel bag I had in the closet. Then I hurried downstairs and onto the front lawn and waited for Mom and Marian.
    Rausch drove us to the Ramada Inn. The three of us sat in the back seat of his big police cruiser. Mom held Marian's hand. I looked out the window at all the cars on all the roads.
    That night in the hotel, Mom called Marian and me to the kitchen table. "You need to see this," she said as she carefully placed a single sheet of paper on the table. The handwriting was shaky, but I recognized it as Dad's:
    I'm sorry. I didn't mean for any of this to happen.

CHAPTER 10
    My aunt Cella came in from San Francisco the next morning. There are a ton of details after someone dies, and she took charge of them. She called the funeral home, the church, the florist, the newspapers, my father's brothers back in Philadelphia, and about a dozen other people.

    All that time Mom sat at the little kitchen table, chainsmoking. Marian sat with her; in fact, Marian couldn't stand to be away from her. But I hated being in that crummy room in that crummy hotel, so I'd go for long walks, hours and hours.
    North Acres Park is near there. Those days were bright and sunny, but I was drawn to the forested part of the park. It's not safe back there. Two years ago some crazy kid with a gun shot his girlfriend in those woods, and that part of the park is used for drug deals and sex deals. My dad had told me to stay away. But now I didn't care about the