We sat at Mrs. Boucher’s long table. I told her almost everything. The art camp, getting kicked out of the car, hitchhiking. The man in the Camaro with white hair like a Barbie, Ellen jumping out and showing up at the Bouchers’. I didn’t say how the man had touched all the way up Ellen’s leg, how he wasn’t going to let her out of the car. I made it sound more like she just got scared and she jumped when the car was going very slow. I didn’t say how Wilson was organizing people to go find and hurt him. I told her Wilson McVay had appeared out of the dark to collect her, how I was confused about how Marie seemed to know him, how he had been hanging around since. “He even came and cut our grass today.”

“Does your mother know what happened to Ellen?”

“No, Mrs. Boucher.” I shook my head. “Please don’t tell her. Please.”

She squeezed my wrist for a moment. “Your mother needs to know, Libby. Ellen should see a doctor.”

“She’s fine, honestly. She’s bossing Beatrice around, fighting with Thomas. She’s completely like herself. My mother would just punish her. You know what she’s like. Please.”

Mrs. Boucher pushed her hands through her hair and looked at me. “Leaving a child on the road. It’s appalling, really.”

I looked at the grain of the table. Everything I did made things worse. “Please don’t tell anyone. I promise everything’s okay now.”

I should never have told her anything. Earlier in the year, when I told Sister Benedict about my mom leaving sometimes for a few days and her not cooking, they’d called my mother in for a meeting. Afterward my mom had exploded. Sister Benedict had used the word neglect. She’d said she understood all we had been through and was very sorry, but she was concerned about our well-being.

“Do you realize what you’ve done, Libby?” my mother had shouted at me. The others, even Marie, looked at me like I was destroying us all. I had broken a code of silence we all kept about everything, and now here was another example of how, if I told our secrets to outsiders, bad things would happen to all of us.

Mrs. Boucher sat there for a moment. Then she asked, “Did Ellen get the license plate number from the car?”

“No.”

“Libby, I need you to promise me that if you think Ellen needs a doctor or if you need any kind of help at all, you will call me. You can always call me.”

“I know. Thank you.”

“And one more thing. You’re right to be cautious about Wilson McVay. He shouldn’t be in the house when your mother isn’t home. Nobody should be.”