The day finally came for the kids to leave. Karen helped pack up their bags and drove them to JFK, where they connected with her folks, who had come up the day before, at the British Air terminal.

She parked the car and went inside with them to check in, where she met up with Sid and Joan. Everyone was excited. Karen hugged Sam with everything she had and told her to take care of her brother. “I don’t want him to be listening to his iPod and get carried off by a pack of lions.”

“It’s a portable DVR, Mom. And in his case more likely a pack of baboons.”

“Funny.” Alex scrunched his face, elbowing her. He’d always had to be dragged a little to go on this trip, always moping about large bugs and contracting malaria.

“C’mon, guys…” Karen gave them both a big hug. “I love you both. You know that. You have a blast. And be in touch.”

“We can’t be in touch, Mom,” Alex reminded her. “We’re in the bush. We’re on safari.”

“Well, pictures then,” she said. “I expect lots and lots of pictures. Y’hear?”

“Yeah, we hear.” Alex smiled sheepishly.

The kids both put their arms around her and gave her a real hug. Karen couldn’t help it—tears welled in her eyes.

Alex snorted. “Here goes Mom.”

Karen wiped them away. “Cut it out.”

She hugged her parents, too, and then she watched them go off, waving as they headed to security—Alex in a Syracuse baseball cap with his backpack containing his car magazines, Sam in a pair of sweatpants with her iPod, waving a last time. Karen barely held it together.

She thought of the warning she had just received and of Charles’s e-mail. And how she wanted her kids to be safe—so what was she doing, sending them to Africa? Back in her car, she sat for a moment in the garage before turning on the ignition. She pressed her face against the steering wheel and cried, happy that her kids were gone but at the same time feeling very alone, knowing that the time had finally come.

The time to face him.

It’s up to us, right?

THAT NIGHT KAREN sat over Charles’s computer.

There was no more fear, no more question of what she had to do. Only the resolve that she now felt to face it.

The thought occurred that she should call Ty. In the past weeks, she had grown close to him, feelings stirring in her, feelings mixed in with the confusion over what was happening with Charles, that seemed better to deny. And she’d never given Ty an answer about what she was prepared to do with what he’d found.

She logged on to her e-mail account.

KFried111. A name Charlie would recognize in an instant.

She was giving him her answer.

It’s just the two of us now, Charlie. And the truth.

What could she possibly say? Every time she thought about it, everything came back. The anguish of losing him. The shock of seeing him again on the screen. Finding the passport, the money. The realization that he wasn’t dead but had abandoned her. Her daughter’s fear after she’d been accosted in her car.

Everything came back, but Ty was right. It wasn’t going to go away.

People had died.

Hesitantly, she typed in the address. Oilman0716. Karen had done it several times before, but this time there was no turning back. She wondered, with a faint smile, what he would think, how his world would change, what door she was opening, a door maybe better off shut.

Not any longer, Charlie.

Karen typed out two words. She read them over and swallowed. Two words that would change her life a second time, reopen wounds that had barely healed.

She clicked send.