“I’m very sorry,” Marshall said, grave and truthful. I knew him well enough to recognize that for these three words at least, he was not in character.

We came into a huge kitchen with a dining nook and an open keeping room behind it. On the back wall was a stone fireplace with a large flat-screen TV over the mantel.

This room felt realer than the others, as if people actually lived here. At the same time, it looked gutted. The walls were bare, and a leather sectional sofa and a low coffee table were the only pieces of furniture in the large space. There was a faint smell of rot in the air, treacle-sweet and cloying.

“Maybe you could answer a few questions while we wait for him?” Marshall said.

“Drinks!” she said, ignoring this.

She was already pulling open a white cabinet. The whole kitchen was white-on-white, but right now it was filthy. Dishes were piled up in the farmhouse sink and along the counter. Three or four disposable aluminum casserole pans were in a stack, the sides encrusted with dried food. Beside me there was a set of stainless-steel flour and sugar canisters with a small army of prescription pill bottles standing in an amber row in front of them. A dozen or so fresh peaches were rotting down to sludge in a crystal bowl. A cloud of tiny fruit flies hovered around them.

“Do you have coffee?” I asked her.

She could use some, and I spotted a fancy Nespresso machine on the other side of the sink. She shook her head, though, dragging out a bottle of Hendrick’s.

“I have room-temp gin or fuck off. Which would you prefer?”

“I’m good, thanks,” Marshall answered.

She opened another cabinet, but it was empty. The glasses were scattered, used and dirty, around the room. She picked them up, one by one, smelling them and peering at the bottoms, until she found two that did not have visible mold growing inside. She banged them onto a clear space on the island so hard I was shocked they didn’t shatter against the marble. Then she looked to me.

“No thanks.” My smile felt sickly.

She sloshed gin into both glasses anyway, then picked up the fuller one and drank it off. She banged it down again, just as hard.

“You sure?” She picked up the other glass, waving it back and forth between us.

“We’re good,” Marshall repeated.

She wheeled on him. “Oh, you’re good, are you? How nice for you.” The gin sloshed in its glass. I was afraid that she was going to drink this second shot, too, and God only knew how many of the prescriptions lined up on the counter were already in her system.

“I’d love some.” I reached for the glass.

“Offer rescinded.” She jerked it back and gulped it down, open-throated. Her eyes were watering now, and her voice was raspy from raw liquor.

“We just need to ask you a few questions,” Marshall began, but those were the exact wrong words.

She drew back, chest heaving. “Are you reporters? If you are, you have to tell me. Are you some kind of sneaky cops?”

“We’re not reporters or cops,” Marshall said, calm and easy, as if he were talking to a wild horse. “We’re not publicists either.”

I saw fear flash across her face, and then it was gone and she was laughing. “No? For a second I thought, oh God, they’re here to rob and kill me, and then I realized I don’t care. That seems fine, actually.” She shrugged, then turned to me, waving a hand at my dress. “But I doubt robber-killers wear Max Mara.”

“My name is Marshall.” Marshall pulled out his wallet, flipping it open to show her his license. He was in the sitting area, across the breakfast counter, too far for her to see his details. Not that it mattered. She barely glanced at it. “I’m a private investigator.”

Her too-bright doll’s eyes pointed back at me. “I know that dress. Nine hundred dollars, right? I saw it at Saks just before Geoff—” Her voice cut out abruptly. Then she went on. “I was waiting for it to go on sale, but you have it already. You must be here to milk us for cash. Get a few more full-price dresses, huh? Well, we already have a PI milking us. Fat lot of good that happy asshole’s done.”

Marshall stayed in character, firm and kind. “I’m not looking for a payday. Not from you. I’m already on a case. It led me here.”

She wasn’t listening. She was in motion, herding me around the counter, staggering a little as she tried to gather him up as well, waving her arms. “Get out! Now! I will call the useless cops, and they’ll come, too. Any excuse to poke around, ask me more endless questions. It’s what they do instead of looking for people’s missing children.”

When Marshall didn’t move, she shoved him. It broke my heart. She was so small and soft, shoving at a mountain. I felt a rush of fondness for Marshall as the mountain moved for her, as if her shove had power. As if it mattered. But I couldn’t simply leave.

I grabbed her arm, hauling her around to face me. Her face was a parody of outrage, and she slapped at my hands. I held on tight.

“I’m not a PI. I’m a mother. My name is Bree Cabbat. He works for me.”

“Bree,” Marshall said, a warning bell.

I ignored him, holding her fast and saying, “I’m a mother. I’m a mother,” again and again as she struggled and smacked at me. “They took my son, too.”

She heard me then. She stilled, and her dead doll’s eyes found my face. “The same people?”

“We think so. That’s why we’re here.”

“He’s still missing?” She swallowed, breathing hard. “Your son is missing?”

I nodded, and even as I said the next five words, I prayed that I was lying. “Yes. I’m just like you.”

13

We ended up sitting on the sectional sofa with her between us, hungry to talk. To me at least. Her knees were angled my way, her back to Marshall. He shot me a look over her head, warning me to keep my mouth shut as questions came spraying out of her.

“The people who took Geoff, you think they did it again? To you? Why do you think that? Who are they? How do you know?”

Her hands clutched at my forearm, but I let Marshall answer. I thought he’d wring my neck if I didn’t. I wished I could tell him not to worry. I’d dropped my assigned character, but I wasn’t me. I was some other frightened mother, fictional. One who’d never spoken to the mother or killed a man while the daughter watched from some dark bridge or alcove. One who did not think of Robert and fall apart. One who definitely did not know what had happened to this woman’s son.