Police lights turned the world red and blue, the same as they had when my mother died.

As a little girl, I stood in the door, covered in blood and watched the fat, bald man heave his bulk out of the car. He slammed the door and strolled toward the house, stopped when he saw me. What must I have looked like to him? A child with her mother's blood soaked into her clothes and dripping from her fingertips and the end of her braid. He turned pale and said something into the radio. In the dreams I had for years after she died, that man was afraid of me. He staggered away, fell into his car, and left me there. Then I looked down and saw the knife in my hand. But, of course, in real life, that hadn't happened. He'd called in more men who arrived in vehicles with flashing lights and they'd wrapped me in a blanket and washed my face and muttered lies about how everything was going to be okay.

I left the empty barn and crossed the driveway to meet the officer. Snow crunched under my boots, a sound felt more than heard.

A young woman with a chocolate brown braid trailing from beneath her black stocking cap emerged from the car the moment it stopped moving. The lights danced across her pale skin. "You called for help?"

The strength of my voice surprised me. "I got home from the store and went inside and there's blood in the hall." Swallowing hurt, as if a jagged bit of glass had lodged in my throat. "A lot of blood. My brother and my father should be here. These are their trucks."

Her gaze darted to the two vehicles parked side-by-side and lingered on the ruined remains of my father's vehicle.

"What's your name?"

"Jessica Kellerman."

People who recognized a celebrity, assuming they weren't one of the mad fans, invariably showed a predictable pattern of behavior. First came surprise, shown by widened eyes and sometimes a little gasp. Then they tried to play it cool as if it were no big deal to meet a person whose life they read about in the supermarket tabloids. Finally, they nonchalantly acted like your friend. They felt as if it was their right. They know you after all—who you've dated, the pregnancies you've lost, how much weight you've gained, which producers snubbed you. No matter to them if you had no idea what their name was. They'd seen you naked on the big screen, so they presumed an intimate connection.

Even in this horrible moment, the pattern played out across the young policewoman's delicate features. To her credit, in the end, she drew a mask of professionalism over her face and asked, "Who's your father?"

What kind of stupid game was she playing? "Matthew Kellerman."

"And you say he lives here?"

I saw the house through her eyes. No one had painted the ancient wooden siding in years. In fact, never in my lifetime, as far as I could remember. Relentless cycles of sun, rain, cold, wind, and snow had stripped the boards down to gray slats showing signs of rot. Cracks like spiderwebs spread across two windows. A third, on the upper story, was boarded over with plywood. The entire building seemed to tilt eastward as if the winds had pushed so hard for so long they'd bent the structure to their will. Maybe they had.

Words failed me, so I nodded.

A gust of wind whipped across the barren fields, stirring up snow devils in its wake.

"He lives here now?"

"Yes!" I hadn't meant to yell. I wrapped my arms around myself in an attempt to hold myself together. "Please, my brother should be here. I don't know where he is, and there's blood in the hall." So much blood. A person could drown in all the blood. It could rise up and swallow everything else in the universe until there's nothing else left.

The officer unsnapped the leather strap over the gun on her hip and led the way to the house with her hand on her weapon. She pushed the door open slowly and eased her slight frame into the kitchen. I followed in her wake, steeling myself for seeing the mess again. It wouldn't be a surprise this time. It wouldn't be as bad.

Biting back the uge to tell her to take her shoes off in my father's house, I pushed the door shut behind us. Her boots shed bits of ice onto the wooden boards. That would need to be cleaned up immediately.

She stopped at the table and reached for something.

"What's this?" When she turned to face me, she took a step back, putting herself well out of my arm's reach. A sleek black pistol dangled from her finger. She'd plucked it from the pile of junk I had spilled out of my purse.

"I've never seen that before."

Disbelief was written across her features. "Where is the blood that you saw?"

"In the hall." Loathe to lead the way and see it again, I pointed.

With the pistol in her left hand and her right hand still on her own gun, she sidled in that direction as if afraid to turn her back on me.

The fat cop ran away and I chased him. Moonlight reflected from the axe in my hands.

No, that was a nightmare. It had never happened. I was no one to fear.

The real police officer who'd come when I called stood in the kitchen door. "Where?"

Was she having some kind of sick joke at my expense? "Right there. Everywhere."

Her braid slid back and forth across her leather-covered shoulder blades when she shook her head. The sound of it was like a snake in dry leaves. "There's nothing here. It doesn't look like anyone's been here in ages."

"What do you mean?"

She stepped aside and gestured for me to look for myself. Forcing my feet to move required a conscious effort. Pick your left foot up. Set it down. Now your right. Do it again. The floor seemed to slope. I wished I had something to hold onto. Finally, I reached the doorway and pressed my hand against the frame for support. From there, I had a clear view of the hall. Cobwebs hung in thing swaths from the ceiling and a thick layer of undisturbed dust covered the floor, except near the kitchen door where my stockinged feet had wiped clean streaks.

"Ms. Kellerman?" Something in the officer's voice felt like sandpaper against my soul. Pity? Derision? Cool disbelief?

I looked into her light brown eyes and saw no malice there, only questions.

"I saw blood."

"Why don't we go to the police station and talk?"

"I'm not crazy. I know what I saw. There was blood everywhere. Liters of it. I need to find my brother."

She reached out to me with her left hand and I wondered where she'd put the gun. Her hand on my upper arm was gentle but firm. "It's freezing in here. Let's go to the station where it's warm. I'll get us some coffee and we can figure out what's going on, okay?"

Was it freezing in the house? I looked around and saw twin tracks of unmelted snow on the filty kitchen floor. My father's house was never dirty. He insisted on everything being clean to the point of sterile.

"Where's my father?"

"Your father is Matthew Kellerman?" A stupid question for her to ask, since we'd already established that.

"Yes."

She stepped back from me again. "Matthew Kellerman's been dead for years."