She saw his eyes agree. He tried to re-gather her in his arms. “But, hon, it’s nine o’clock. Prickreiner’s probably got a load on. He never really quit drinking, I heard. Can’t you do it tomorrow?”

“I can’t. He might be in danger,” she said. “Not tomorrow, tonight. And he also needs to give me an alibi.”

“You have deputies. Do you need to confront him right now?”

Now she pulled away.

“He’s all mine. I’m not taking any shortcuts either. Taylor will be fine. And if I can eat your mother’s macaroni salad, I can look the devil in the eye.”

In minutes she was loading Taylor and his envelope into the Charger, reassuring him as the locks clicked down. She had buckled his booster onto the backseat, and she talked through the window space.

“I’m proud of you for being a big boy and doing the right thing. And I’m so glad you got to play in the pool with your brother. Dylan and Daddy are proud of you too. And guess what? Now you can go on your field trip to Elmo Pond and help at the farm breakfast tomorrow.”

Her little boy gazed back wordlessly into her mirror as she turned out the end of the driveway onto Pederson Road. In a half mile they were rolling past the spot where in late July from a potato field Opie’s friend Rosie Glick had seen him hitchhiking and had run to tell her father. Amos Glick had barreled down the road in his fastest horse and buggy to snatch up Taylor and bring him home.

“We’re all very proud of you,” she said. “We would have a hundred more boys just like you if we could. But then we’d be too busy, so we’d rather keep things just the way they are. With Opie home, of course.”

He just stared at her. He was every bit just a common seven-year-old boy, she thought… yet such a mystery, and so… formidable. It was impossible to explain to non-parents how even the littlest children were people. You did not define or control them—not without committing abuse, anyway—and it was equally impossible to explain, she thought, the unrelenting aloneness of parenthood. You created this life. This was yours to care for.

Am I doing it right?

About halfway to Rickreiner’s, she frowned and stuck her arm out the window, trying to scoop in moving air toward her sweaty face. Taylor had begun to hum behind her.

“What are you humming, bud?”

The answer to that would remain private, apparently. He only vaguely smiled at her.

In another quarter mile, she parked the Charger alongside Rickreiner’s mailbox, in the outer glow of the motion-sensing floodlight that cast its beam across his yard.

“Hop out, Taylor. Drop it in the box. Shut the box. Hop back in.”

He did.