Robert slept between us, my hand on his chest, so that I could feel him breathing. I looked at him, then out the window to our moon-drenched, peaceful yard, back and forth, again and again. The simple act of closing my eyes started a panic attack. So I watched over him until almost dawn, when I was tired enough to drift off without noticing.

I dreamed the concrete stairs that led to Funtime. Coral was waiting for me there. Carousel music drifted down, a garish, joyous waltz. I climbed up to find the painted animals whole again, rising and falling on golden posts. Coral rode astride a perfect lion, noble as Aslan, wreathed in living roses. As I reached the edge of the ride, she smiled at me and checked her cheap watch, and all around me the world exploded into fire and ash. I bolted upright to find a regular sunny Monday. Well, almost regular.

Peyton and Anna-Claire were in the kitchen, arguing over coconut milk yogurt flavors, as if a pair of bulky, silent ex-soldiers from the private security firm that Trey had hired weren’t sitting nearby at the kitchen table. They knew that their brother had been taken by the same woman who the police believed had snuck into the gala and murdered Spencer Shaw, and yet here they were, fussing over the last honey-vanilla. Perhaps the presence of these large armed men relaxed my anxious middle child. My oldest, I thought, was a little bit excited by it all. The drama of having bodyguards appealed to her. She lost out on the yogurt in the end because she was too involved in nine simultaneous group chats to fight for it.

I had to remind myself that they hadn’t known about Robert’s absence until it was over. They’d been at their grandma’s, making cookies, sleeping in. He was safe before they ever knew he’d been in danger.

My mother was still upstairs, asleep in a guest room. She’d been more upset than the girls. Too upset to go home. But also strangely vindicated. She didn’t say out loud that this proved the world was as blackhearted as she’d always said; she didn’t have to. I’d made her promise to go home this morning and make an appointment with her doctor, maybe go back on her antianxiety medication for a little. I thought I ought to find us all therapists. Ones who specialized in trauma. I wanted mine to have an M.D., so she could write prescriptions. Prescriptions sounded pretty good.

I made avocado toast for Anna-Claire, wondering how I could stand to let them go to school. I wanted to keep things normal for them, as much as I could. In the end I put Robert in his car seat and drove them myself.

An ex–Army Ranger named Mills went with us. His partner, Maxwell, discreetly followed in a dark sedan. It was a strange ride. Mills was young and beautiful, built like a movie star with a low fade haircut and a gun. Anna-Claire kept leaning up between the seats to ask him questions about his job and his military service and whether or not he was a dog person. She was both overconfidently flirty and thirteen years old, which made poor Mills wildly uncomfortable. He kept cutting his eyes at me, giving short, awkward answers while Peyton giggled.

I couldn’t help him. The closer we got to St. Alban’s, the tighter my chest screwed shut around my lungs. Robert had been stolen from this very campus. In the car-pool line, I gripped the wheel so tight that the blood drained from my hands. It was all I could do to let the girls get out and go inside. Then I sat frozen until the cars stuck behind me started tapping their horns in brief, polite peeps. I pulled forward, out of the way, but leaving wasn’t possible.

I parked on the road across from the main entrance and turned the car off, in spite of Mills’s puzzled glances. I told him we would go home soon. He texted his partner, and Maxwell parked behind me.

We waited. I don’t know what they were doing, but I was watching for Lexie Pine. After a while I turned the car on to crack my windows and let the pleasant air circulate. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Mills and I lived out of Robert’s diaper bag all day. I had protein bars and fresh diapers and formula and bottled water. I downloaded a light, sweet audiobook about misunderstandings at a wedding and played it to pass the time. Mills probably hated it. Around one, Maxwell had pizza and soft drinks delivered right to our cars. It was from some chain, thick with plastic-looking pepperoni and cheap, rubbery cheese. It tasted better than it looked.

Marshall called around two. Just to check on me, he said. I’d been texting with Trey on and off, but I hadn’t told my husband I was hanging around outside the school like a sex offender. I told Marshall, though.

“When I try to leave, or even look away from the building, I panic. It’s ridiculous. There’s an armed ex-marine in the car behind me who’ll be here all day. But apparently I think it’s my magic presence that keeps them safe.”

Mills sat beside me, stoic, trying to pretend he wasn’t listening.

“So don’t drive them tomorrow,” Marshall said. “Let Trey handle it.”

It was simple and pragmatic, and it worked. Tuesday I kissed them good-bye and let them go on to the school with their father and Maxwell. Mills stayed with me.

After that I couldn’t leave the house. Panic trilled up my spine at the very idea of stepping outside, being visible and exposed. I wanted walls around me and my son. I wanted more ex-soldiers, dotted around my yard like points on a compass.

I called the school office to make sure the girls had been checked in to the system at homeroom. I couldn’t let Robert out of my sight. I liked him best bound to me in his sling. I tried not to think about how Coral’s body had so recently been in place of mine, how my son had been tied to her, his flutter-fast heart beating beside hers.

The only thing that got me out the door was the arrival of the mail around eleven. I left Robert asleep in a bouncy chair by Mills and went to get it. I wanted to be the one to intercept Coral’s letter. By then I wasn’t waiting for it so much as I was resigned to it.

It wasn’t there, though. Not yet. Just a stack of junk.

I closed the mailbox, impatience and relief at war in me, and my cell phone rang. I juggled the pile of mail into one arm, then pulled it out of my back jeans pocket. It was Marshall.

He was mostly checking up on me, but he also had updates he’d gleaned from his sources about the ongoing investigation. Coral hadn’t used the detonator she’d had hidden under her afghan. That had been her backup. The explosion had been caused by a chemical timer.

“I told you she wasn’t bluffing,” I said, sitting down on one of the wrought-iron chairs on my front porch. “At the end she kept saying I was out of time, that it was too late to call Trey up. I didn’t understand.”