The drizzle was now a mist. Not enough for umbrellas, just enough to make us hurry.

Marshall still wore his nicest suit, a dark gray with a subtle stripe that he’d had on at the party. I’d pressed it out for him and loaned him a fresh shirt and tie. It was an older shirt, too tight for Trey but still a bit too large for rangy Marshall.

Marshall’s plan was to stay as close to the truth as possible without giving away who we were. My legal situation was too precarious, he felt, to allow us to be honest. He would say he was a freelance PI, no association with the firm. If they didn’t look closely at his license, they might even assume we were from Alabama, too. He’d say we’d come to them because he was working a missing-child case that was similar to their own.

He’d introduce me as his partner, but he’d told me to talk as little as possible, as if I had the dual role of a PI and a stone statue, mute and pale. I’d thrown on a simple blue dress that was more suited to an afternoon fund-raiser, but it was the most businesslike thing in my closet.

As we went up the walk, I was already having a hard time keeping both our missing children fictional. I pinched the soft flesh between my thumb and index finger, hard. I was a person who did not know Geoff’s face or his fate. There was no Robert in this story. I was not a mother.

I set my face to something neutral, then reached out and touched the bell.

Almost at once we heard slapping, angry footsteps, and then the door was jerked open. Kelly Wilkerson, wearing yoga pants covered in cat hair and a tight white T-shirt with food and coffee stains spattered across her breasts, sized us up in a hot, raking glance. Her blond hair hung in dirty hanks around her face.

“You came!” she said. “My husband said you wouldn’t.”

I felt myself spin into flux. She was expecting someone. Strangers. I exchanged a glance with Marshall; neither of us knew who we’d just become, but in that glance I knew we were both willing to be whoever she expected, if it got us in the door.

“May we come in?” Marshall asked in a neutral tone. Not overly friendly, but not coolly professional either.

“Sure.” She opened the door wider, and as the gray daylight hit her face, I felt my heart bottom out. On Facebook she’d looked like a grown-up with her sleek hair and perfect makeup, but her soft jawline and the baby-plump skin around her eyes said she was closer to Anna-Claire’s age than my own, barely legal to drink. Before we could step through, suspicion darkened her face, and she said, “Wait. You’re not reporters, are you? My lawyer says you have to tell me if you are, and we’re not talking to the press.”

“We’re not reporters,” Marshall said.

“Okay, then,” she said, pulling us inside a huge, vaulted foyer with a gaudy chandelier. “Adam says hiring a publicist is going to make us look more guilty, but it’s what people do now. Because of Twitter. We’ll be crucified on Twitter if they actually charge us. We have to get our side of the story out, but our stupid lawyer says we aren’t allowed to talk to reporters, not at all, for any reason, and the police keep coming back to question us, and no one’s looking for Geoff. That’s the main thing. They won’t look for Geoff because they think I did something to my own baby. Nobody believes me.”

So I was a publicist. I felt my expression warming as I sank into the role. It helped that I, of all people, knew that the cops had it so very wrong. When I told her, “I believe you,” it rang with truth.

Marshall said, “Is your husband home? We’d like to talk to both of you if we could.”

“He went to the store. He said. To get bread and milk, like if a hurricane was coming.” She snorted and passed a hand over her eyes. She was answering Marshall’s question, but as her hand dropped, her gaze settled on me. Her eyes were bruise-blue and shiny as glass. They didn’t belong in a living being’s face. “That’s some bullshit right there. Is it bad to lie to your publicist? Because I’m pretty sure he’s actually off screwing his wife. Ex-wife. The other wife.” She laughed, an abrupt and ugly sound. “He wouldn’t want that in the press release, huh? But I don’t care. You can put it right in. Say that while the police are circling me like sharks and not looking for my son, my husband is off finding comfort in the big fat bosom of his ex.”

I was glad my job was to be quiet then, because I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe. Was I looking at the person I would become if we didn’t get Robert back? She was feral and simmering, either drunk or high on something. Whatever she’d taken, it was not enough to push down her quaking fury at her husband, at the police, at the awful state of not-knowing she’d been left in for six weeks.

I had a strong maternal urge to pull her into my arms, as if she were one of my own girls. I wanted to rock her and let her scream out her rage. I wanted to scream with her. It was all I could do to keep my face in the plain, interested shape of Potential Publicist, trying to get hired.

“Do you think he’ll be back soon?” Marshall asked. Her husband was the one we most wanted to talk to. He was a law professor, likely an ex-lawyer, and closer to Spencer’s age.

“Sure. I mean, how long can that particular errand possibly take?” She snorted at her own joke, then extended one arm in a parody of gracious welcome. “Shall we await him in the living room?”

The foyer had wide arches on either side, showing me a dining room with a formal living room across from it. They looked like stage sets for an updated production of A Doll’s House. Everything matched, perfectly. It was as if she’d gone to some upscale Rooms To Go and had them pack up entire staged areas for her, even the oversize stone vase and the painted wall fan and the mirror.

She started toward the living room but then paused, staring at her sofa and the matchy-matched floral chairs as if she’d never seen the room before.

“No. Let’s go back to the kitchen. I could use a drink. You want a drink?” She didn’t wait for an answer, though a drink was the very last thing she needed. As we followed her deeper into the house, Marshall shot me a warning look, though what he was warning me against, I could not fathom. “I hate that couch. I was pregnant when I picked it out. The house, too. It was the second house we looked at, and I said, ‘This one, please,’ like I was picking out an ice-cream flavor, and he bought it for me, just like that. His wife still lives in his real house. She got most of his real furniture, too.”