Surprising dark elements in Ann Beattie's recent stories

How do you account for this streak of darkness that runs through some of Ann Beattie's late (post-2000) stories in "The New Yorker Stories"? Not that her stories are all sweetness and light - many of the early stories and mid-career stories had a sinister element, though the darkness is generally tempered (even obscured) by her wit and quirkiness: that's what readers tend to focus on in her stories, that's what we tend to remember. The dark aspect was always there, but it's what I'd call an interior darkness: characters causing misery in others (wives, husbands, lovers, children, parents) or suffering from their own malaise. Now I'm thinking about two stories post-2000, both fairly long, one, Women of This World, about a family gathering (Thanksgiving?) in Maine with assorted emotional complications, the other about a well-off investor in a difficult relation with estranged daughter, visits niece and nephew in LA (The Last Odd Day in LA) - in the first, out of nowhere, a country neighbor is beaten in her home and the central figure in the story makes the discovery; in LA, the guy comes home and is confronted by the daughter of the woman he's been dating who at first seems a confused but reasonable kid and then - from nowhere - pulls a gun and shoots. These are dark elements that come from outside - characters basically unknown to the central figures in the story, their violent actions not generated by the events of the story but a sudden intrusion into this civilized, comfortable world - a moment of Joyce Carol Oates in the middle (or at the end) of a Beattie story. Her view of the world in the 21st century is shifting, more unsettled and uncertain - same for all of us.