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“I’m done,” she said. “Put me to bed.”

I wasn’t entirely sure where I’d last seen the bed, but I took her hand.

Someone from the university search committee had discovered the house, a big brick and timber Tudor on a wooded half-acre lot, the only place we’d seen in town that reminded us of home. Twice as much home as the home we’d left, at that: four bedrooms, three baths, two fireplaces. Flagstone sidewalks and hardwood floors. We’d already decided to use the upstairs master suite for the library.

While I worked in the larger of the two main floor bedrooms, Sara found the box with the sheets. I huffed and puffed, wrangled the box spring and the mattress into place, then sat on the edge and rubbed her feet for a while.

“Mmm.” She stretched out, limp as a cat. “Do you do happy endings?”

“We should consult the local statutes before we get into all that.” I kneaded her arches. “No telling what kind of trouble you can get into in this part of the country.”

“ Smart- ass.” She closed her eyes. “I’m too tired anyway.”

And looking green around the gills again. I mentioned the all- night supermarket we’d spotted nearby. “Want me to pick up some ginger tea?”

“I think I’m over the ginger tea.”

“Something else?”

“Just sleep,” she said, nearly there already. “Are you coming to bed?”

It should have occurred to me then that Sara had more on
her mind than the morning sickness, which ebbed and flowed throughout the day.

I rarely go to sleep the same day I wake up. She almost never stays up past 10 p.m. I should have recognized that she wouldn’t have asked the question if she hadn’t felt an uncharacteristic need for company. That she was feeling just like me: displaced, out of her element. Probably wondering if she’d made the right decision, accepting the job here. Wondering if we’d made a mistake.

But I didn’t get it. It was hard to relax with our life in boxes, and my mind had already wandered. I thought I could at least unpack a few books.

It took me ten minutes to drive to the SaveMore on Belmont, pay for a six- pack of Goose Island, and drive back to the house. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Less than the amount of time it had taken me to hook up the TiVo machine. Barely enough time to feel like I’d been anywhere.

Here’s the way I remember it:

I parked in the garage and came in the side door, through the kitchen. I know that I put the beer in the fridge and my car keys on the island counter, because that’s where I found them later, after the police arrived.

Sara told me later that I’d called her name, but I don’t remember doing that. I don’t remember hearing anything, or seeing anything. I don’t remember what it was that made me stop on my way from the kitchen to the bedroom to pull a golf club from the bag I’d almost left behind in Newton, which I hadn’t otherwise touched in years.

I remember feeling silly doing it. I remember thinking how bare all the walls looked. Nothing about the house seemed like ours yet. I remember thinking:
I don’t like those curtains.

Then Sara screamed. Or at least she tried.

The man pinning her down on the bed had one hand clamped over her mouth. I remember a fat vein in his wrist. I
remember the desperation in my wife’s muzzled voice. The wild fear squirming in her eyes.

The academic in me would like to report that I recognized an intruder, period. I’d like to say that, in the heat of the moment, his ethnic makeup was not a detail that I noticed.

But I can’t. I saw what Charlie Bernard later called
the liberal white male’s secret horror:
a rough black hand creasing my wife’s pale skin, a black fist tugging her waistband down. His eyes were bloodshot. His teeth were yellow. I could smell his sweat from the doorway. Or at least I remember it that way.

Looking back, I can hardly picture myself. It seems incredible to imagine how easily I might have hauled off with the golf club and accidentally hit Sara in the face. Or how easily Sara’s attacker—taller, heavier, far stronger than me—might have taken the stupid club out of my hands and used it against me.

Which is more or less exactly what he did. Just not before I managed to land the first blow.

I don’t exactly remember swinging, but I remember the meaty thud of the clubhead landing somewhere between his shoulder blades. My arms went rubbery, weak with fear and adrenaline, delivering little power. Still the guy grunted, arching his back. He stood straight and clawed at his spine, as if I’d planted a knife there.

Then he turned toward me.

“Motherfucker,
” he said.

Before I could steady my balance, he launched himself over the bed, eyes blazing. On collision, my limbs turned to water. My feet tangled.

We went down together. I landed flat on my back, all his weight on top of me, hot breath in my face.

My own breath rushed out of my lungs. I felt my head bang the floor, saw a flash of light, and couldn’t see anything after that.

A miracle: I felt the pressing weight lift from my chest.

But it wasn’t a miracle. When my vision cleared, I looked up and saw how all of this would end.

The intruder stood over me, face twisted, my golf club raised over his head. His broad chest rose and fell. Thin ropes of foamy spittle connected his lips.

“Hit me with a fuckin’
golf
club, man?”

Sara’s next scream rattled the windows. She went for him before he could finish the fight, scrambling across the mattress, her legs tangled in the sheets. I watched the guy change his grip, opening his stance to both of us.

I thought:
Don’t hit her. Don’t hit her. Please.

“Man, fuck this.”

The club hit the floor with a thud and a clatter.

He bounded over me on his way out the door.

Maybe we were more than he’d bargained for. Or maybe we just weren’t worth the effort. But I knew we were safe then. Just like that, our wolf had decided to cut out and head for the trees.

For some idiotic reason, I reached out and grabbed his foot anyway. The guy stumbled, almost fell, braced himself in the doorway, and yanked his leg free of my grasp. He stomped my eye hard enough to make me wish I hadn’t grabbed his foot.

Then he was gone.

Sara actually picked up the golf club and chased after him, her bare feet thumping on the hardwood, his heavier footfalls already fading toward the back of the house. I shouted her name and tried to get up, but I couldn’t seem to clear my head. I heard the back door burst open on its hinges; somewhere in the distance, I heard the golf club hit the floor again.

By the time I’d made it to my hands and knees, Sara had already returned to the bedroom, hair flying, one hand pressed against her ear.

“Sara and Paul Callaway,” she said, panting our new address into the phone.

FOR WHAT IT S WORTH, the detective told us, “my feeling is that Sara wasn’t this guy’s goal.”

His name was Harmon. He had a pleasant manner, studious eyes, and a card that said General Investigations Unit. We sat in the living room, Detective Harmon in my reading chair, Sara and I on the couch, boxes stacked all around us. Sara folded her arms and tried to smile.

“Cold comfort,” he said. “I understand.” I said, “He looked like a guy with a goal to me.” “I’m sorry. Of course. What I mean to say is that I don’t believe you need to worry about him coming back.” Harmon nodded gently. “That’s my feeling.”

Something in the way the detective acknowledged my comment made me understand that he wasn’t trying to minimize the circumstances. He wasn’t trying to downplay our fears. He was
simply doing his best, out of thought for Sara, to give us his opinion of the situation without getting into words like
predator
and
rape.

Cold water trickled down my neck. Earlier, one of the patrol guys had taken the plastic SaveMore bag from my beer run, filled it with cubes from the automatic ice dispenser in the freezer door, and handed it to me.

Now, while I took the sack of half- melted ice away from the boot print on my face, Detective Harmon explained that his unit had investigated a handful of roughly similar cases in other parts of town last year. “ Old- fashioned burglaries, primarily, except that our operators seemed to target move- ins.”

“ Move- ins?”

“Everything’s already packed up in boxes. All ready to carry right back out.” Harmon gave us an empathetic look.
I know. People. I could tell you stories.
“First night in a new place, almost everybody realizes they need to run out for something or other. Toilet paper, something for breakfast in the morning, what have you.”

I remember thinking of my inessential six- pack and feeling a pang of embarrassment. Of course, nobody faulted me. No responsible American adult should need to feel guilty about a cold beer on moving day. Right?

“In theory, we think that one person finds a spot on the premises while a partner circles the vicinity in a vehicle,” Harmon explained. “When opportunity presents itself, the guy on the ground gains access through a back or side entrance, finds the box marked
Grandmother’s Silver,
whatever else he can grab in a hurry.” He gestured at a few of the boxes containing our belongings. “He signals by cell phone, the partner rides in, and off they go.”

“Nice,” I said. I was thinking,
A spot on the premises.
I thought of men lurking in the woods behind our house, watching and waiting. I wondered where Sara’s attacker had been hiding when I’d left. Had I actually walked right past him? The thought prickled the skin at the back of my neck.

Harmon shrugged. “Like I said, that’s been our theory.”

Sara sat quietly through all of this. I said, “I don’t mean to be argumentative, Detective, but this guy wasn’t hunting for silverware.”

“If I can be honest, that’s what troubles me.” Harmon closed his notepad. “Our offenders logged a few wins before we came up with a vehicle description and put it out over the local news. They’ve been quiet ever since.” He looked at us and shrugged again. “Maybe they’re back in business, or maybe somebody new decided to get in on the act. Either way, this is the first assault we’ve seen. That changes the picture. Con siderably.”

I felt Sara tense beside me. I reached out, put my hand on her knee. She flinched when I touched her. Then she laced her fingers through mine and squeezed.

“Based on the way this played out, I’m still inclined to believe that in your case, the suspect made a mistake. Thought the house was empty.” Harmon opened his notepad again. “Mrs. Callaway—Sara—you said that when you heard the subject come in, you assumed it was Paul, and you called a greeting?”

“I… Yes, that’s right.”

“My guess is that our subject came in with one idea and then, unfortunately, got another.” Harmon let his tone imply the rest:
If he’d liked the second idea badly enough…

A burly cop came through the room, gun belt creaking, nodding politely as he passed us. He wore a pair of latex gloves and carried my golf club by the butt of the grip, between two fingers.

“The good news,” Harmon said, “is that we stand to retrieve prints from that club of yours. Hopefully elsewhere. And you’re the first to provide a physical description we can work with. Nice short game, by the way.”

I glanced at the uniformed officer, already on his way out the front door with the evidence. From where I sat, I could see that the club I’d grabbed was a Chi Chi Rodriguez sand wedge
left over from the junior set I’d had when I was twelve. A kid’s model. Everything about the situation suddenly seemed absurd to me.

“If I could do it again,” I said, “I’d use my driver.” Detective Harmon chuckled. Sara squeezed my hand. I felt like a hero for a moment, and then it passed.

A stout limestone sign at the mouth of the cul- de- sac lets you know when you’ve found Sycamore Court. According to Jodi, our realtor, what seemed like an offshoot to the larger subdivision down the hill had actually existed before the rest, a woodsy enclave on the northwestern edge of a town that had grown out to meet it.

There were four other homes situated around the circle; any one of them, in a similar neighborhood, in almost any New England city of comparable size, would have doubled the mortgage we’d signed on to pay here in Clark Falls.

Standing on the front walk with Sara, the heat of the day still hanging in the air, I watched the ripple effect of our incident as officers moved from house to house, climbing steps, knocking on doors. Flashlight beams arced in the surrounding woods as cops in uniform spoke to people in bathrobes.

Eyes turned to the new couple on the block. I wondered what people would be saying about us over the backyard grape vine in the morning. Then I remembered that I’d never cared what the neighbors said in Newton, or anywhere else. Sara calls me a nonjoiner.

We’d noted, the first time we’d looked at the house in May, that the center of the circle had been developed into a plot of community space. There were iron benches and ground lights, a swing set and a teeter- totter, a jungle gym made of safety logs—all funded and built, Jodi the realtor had told us, by the residents of Sycamore Court.

Over by the jungle gym, I saw a man in a T-shirt and
pajama bottoms speaking to one of the officers. After a few minutes, they shook hands. The man clapped the officer on the shoulder and headed toward us in his slippers.

That was how we first met Roger Mallory.

“Hell of a welcome,” he said, coming up the walk. I put him several years older than us, but still in the vicinity of middle age. About my height, thicker across the beam, with a weathered face and a friendly charisma that reminded me a little of my friend Charlie Bernard back home. “You folks all right?”

“A little rattled,” I said. “But we’re okay.” I slipped an arm around Sara’s waist and extended my hand. “Paul Callaway. This is my wife, Sara.”

“Roger Mallory. I’m the house right across.” He nodded at my eye as we shook hands. “That looks like it hurts.”

It did hurt. “Nothing too serious.”

“I hear you’ve got a damned handy chip shot, though.”

“A Rottweiler might have been handier.”