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shouted. “She’s never done that before!” He was still standing next to the fallen chair, holding the towel around his waist to keep it from sliding down.
    Tyler started laughing—mostly from relief, Steve thought. “Maybe she’s got the hots for you.”
    â€œEw, gross, are you kidding me? She’s ancient!”
    Jocelyn burst out laughing, too. She took a mouthful of noodles but didn’t notice how much hot sauce she had put on her spoon. Tears sprang from her eyes. “Sorry, darling. We just wanted to shake you up a little, but I think you shook her up. It really was strange how she came walking up to you. She never does that.”
    â€œHow long was she standing there?” Matt asked indignantly.
    â€œThe whole time.” Tyler grinned.
    Matt’s jaw dropped. “Now she’s seen me naked!”
    Tyler looked at him with a mixture of absolute amazement and the kind of disgust that borders on a sympathetic sort of love, reserved only for big brothers toward their younger, dim-witted siblings. “She can’t see, you idiot,” he said. He wiped off the lens of his GoPro and looked at the blind woman behind the stained glass.
    â€œSit down, Matt,” Steve said, his face stiffening. “Dinner’s getting cold.” Sulkily, Matt did what he was told. “And I want you to erase those images now, Tyler.”
    â€œAw, come on! I can just cut her out.…”
    â€œ Now, and I want to see you do it. You know the rules.”
    â€œWhat is this, Pyongyang?”
    â€œDon’t make me say it again.”
    â€œBut there was some kick-ass material in there,” Tyler muttered without much hope. He knew when his father meant it. And he did indeed know the rules. Reluctantly, he held up the display at an angle toward Steve, selected the video file, and clicked ERASE , then OK .
    â€œGood boy.”
    â€œTyler, report her in the app, would you?” Jocelyn asked. “I wanted to do it earlier, but you know I’m hopeless at these things.”
    Cautiously, Steve walked around to the living room via the hallway. The woman hadn’t budged. There she stood, right in front of the French doors with her face pressed against the glass, like something that had been put there as a macabre joke, to replace a floor lamp or a houseplant. Her lank hair hung motionless and dirty under her headscarf. If she knew there was someone else in the room, she didn’t let on. Steve came closer but deliberately avoided looking at her, sensing her shape from the corner of his eye. It felt better not to look at her up close like this. He could smell her now, though: the stench of another era, of mud and cattle in the streets, of disease. She swayed gently, so that the wrought-iron chain shackling her arms tightly to her shrunken body tapped against the varnished doorpost with a dull clank.
    â€œShe was last seen at five twenty-four p.m. by the cameras behind the Market and Deli,” he heard Tyler’s muffled voice say from the other room. Steve could also hear that the woman was whispering. He knew that not listening to her whispering was a matter of life and death, so he concentrated on the voice of his son, and on Johnny Cash. “There are four reports from people who saw her, but nothing after that. Something about a barrel organ. Dad … are you okay?”
    His heart pounding, Steve knelt down next to the woman with the stitched-up eyes and picked up the dishcloth. Then he stood up. As his elbow brushed against the woman’s chain, she turned her maimed face toward him. Steve dropped the dishcloth over her head and scrambled away from her and back to the dining room, his forehead drenched in sweat, as Fletcher’s fierce, alarmed barking came from the backyard.
    â€œDishcloth,” he said to Jocelyn. “Good idea.”
    The family continued eating, and all during dinner the woman with the stitched-up eyes stood