But after she told me how much, surely she would let me call my husband. To get the money. He could decide if we should call the police. Or some kind of professional. There were people whose job was to negotiate with kidnappers, freelancers who didn’t care about catching bad guys or any of the rules. I’d seen a movie about one of them, or a TV show. They only cared about getting the baby back. Maybe it would be better, safer, smarter, to call that kind of person. Trey would know. I found my head nodding itself, up and down, and I could breathe better. Soon I wouldn’t be alone in this. Together Trey and I were stronger. We’d get him back.

I was at the turn into my neighborhood, but the light was red. An outsize SUV was in front of me, blocking my way in. My watch said I had six more minutes. The light stayed red and stayed red, and I screamed, a long, harrowing howl, beating my hands against the wheel. A woman in the car beside me, a young mother with a toddler strapped in the back, turned to look at me, openmouthed. The toddler looked, too, eyes as round as quarters. I stared back, and I hated her. She had her baby buckled in safe behind her. She had everything I wanted. Whatever she saw in my face made her hastily turn forward again. As soon as the light changed, she took off.

I was in my neighborhood now, but in my panic I’d forgotten about the girls. Safe with Marshall but on their way to my anxious little mother’s place. If they showed up unannounced, if Marshall mentioned how odd I’d been on the phone, she would assume the worst. She always assumed the worst.

“Hey, Siri, call Mom.”

She answered on the second ring. “Hi, sweetie!”

I had to sound normal. I had to do a better job than I had with Marshall anyway. I thought about Anna-Claire, the way she slipped so easily from role to role. I’d just watched her channel Rizzo, and yet her own essential self was alive under every line. She was a girl inside a girl, and both were true.

She’d gotten this from me. A bug, Trey called it fondly. She got bit by your acting bug. Now I had been boiled down to an animal, wild with terror and fury, wholly feral. But I also had to be Bree Cabbat, wife and mother, busy and happy. That person felt so distant, so foreign. I had to make her true. I felt myself nod, thinking. In this scene Bree calls to ask for a favor, and nothing in her tone upsets her mother.

“Hi, Mom! I was wondering if the girls could spend the night at your place—maybe even the weekend?” I was turning onto my street. I sounded good, though inside I was little more than something howling.

“Well, I would love that! But we didn’t plan it. Is everything all right?” She sounded worried. That was all it took.

“I have a little stomach virus. It’s going around, and it’s so contagious. Robert’s safe—he’s too young to catch it, but if the girls come home, they’ll have it in five minutes.” I made myself laugh, a light little sound. I manufactured it inside my body, then released it.

“Oh, how awful. Should I go get them at school?” They stayed with her so often that they kept pj’s and toothbrushes and even extra clothes and swimsuits there.

“No need. Marshall’s dropping them off.”

“Oh. How’s he doing? How’s Cara?” She always asked that, in exactly this tone, ever since Betsy went out on a routine domestic and did not come home.

“Fine, but, Mom? I really don’t feel great. I need to go lie down.”

“You poor thing! Do you want me to come get Robert?”

“No,” I said, too fast, too hard. I forced myself to soften. “You know how contagious these things are. I don’t want you to catch it either.”

“Okay. Try to get some rest.”

“I will. You’re the sweetest,” I said, and hung up fast.

My cheeks felt wet. I reached up and touched them, wondering when I’d started crying again. But at least I could see my house ahead.

As I pulled up, everything looked so still and quiet. The drive was empty, and no cars were parked out front. She was not here. Robert was not here. The very idea had been lunacy, driven by fear and hope. If Robert was here, why would we pay? But if no one was going to meet me, why had the note told me to go home? I couldn’t make sense of it. Nothing made sense.

I was reaching for the button that would open the garage door when I caught a flash of bright color from the corner of my eye. I stopped the Escalade in the driveway.

A gift bag hung from my front doorknob. It was striped in hot pink and yellow, with lime green curling ribbons and tissue paper exploding out the top. It couldn’t have been there long. It was so garish I would have noticed it when I was leaving.

Had she told me to go home so I’d see this? Perhaps inside the bag I’d find instructions, telling me when and where and how much. I shook my head. It felt random, so risky. We lived in Great Lakes, an old, established Decatur neighborhood, very safe but still urban. Anyone could have come along and taken the bag.

I turned off the car, then got out and ran to my door, hoping this was what she’d wanted me to see. Hoping this would tell me what she wanted. We could pay. If we didn’t have enough, Trey’s family would help. They had never fully warmed to me. They’d liked his first wife, Buckhead born and with the right last name, so much better. But they doted on my babies. Especially Robert, their last and littlest grandchild. The only boy, which mattered way more than it should to my father-in-law. But now I was glad. He would help us. We would pay, and she would give Robert back.

I pulled the bag off the knob. It was light, but I could feel items shifting in the bottom of it. If that old woman had left it, then she’d come in plain view of our front-door camera. The video would already be uploaded to my cell phone.

I let myself in, hurrying through the house, back into our great room, where I dumped the bag out onto my kitchen island. There was a cheaply made smartphone with no casing and no screen protector. This was from the woman who had Robert, then. Had to be. This was how she would tell me where to bring the money. There was also a charging cord and an old Bluetooth, the flat triangular kind that tucked up close beside the ear. The last thing in the bag was a bottle of prescription medication, which struck me as odd. Not related to the other things.

I got out my own cell phone and checked the app that linked to our security camera. One new video had been uploaded almost immediately after I left the house, according to the time stamp. I pressed play.

It was her. The witch I’d seen peering in my window when I was half dreaming. The meemaw I’d shown Marshall at the school. I’d known it all along, but it still sounded a bell of shock deep down inside me. She could have shaded her face with the hat, but instead she locked gazes with the camera. How blatant she was. How bold.