“Sometimes. But Padgett, he was with the Baby Jaguars. That’s your girl. That’s Kit.”

“What’s going on? Where’s Ariel?”

“Gone,” the two parents, the spouses, say in unison.

“She shut the school and took off,” Nina says, “as soon as it came in this morning. Nobody knows where she is, or the guy, that monster, or what is going on.”

At monster, Padgett is half-remembering a story, long ago from Nina, a man with an animal face and the rest—meat?—lost in wine. “What is going on?” Padgett asks, and her feet seem to be sliding suddenly, like a beginner ice-skating, and when she grabs the head of a parking meter, cold and solid, she realizes she’s grabbed it for support.

“Take your phone and scroll it up,” Nina says, and Gabriel makes a gesture to calm her. “Thank God and nothing personal, Padgett, that our Daisy is in Yummy Cookie.”

“Sweet Candy,” Padgett says dumbly.

“Ariel sent out a message at seven twenty this morning,” Gabriel says, like the lawyer he maybe also is. “In the wake of accusations the school is closed until further notice. The accounts are gone too. Call Vic, Padgett. His people have hacked in. They’re using the Trail. They’re trailing her now.”

Padgett’s feet keep sliding. Repurposed linen slippers, designed by the sister of another wife, do not help. No, this will not do at all, what is happening. She needs help, a drink or some other medical attention.

“You look pale,” Nina says, and then shrieks her head back. “Doctor!”

“Nina,” Gabriel says.

“There are nine top-class doctors with kids here if there’s one,” Nina says. “Doctor!”

“Let’s all get ahold of ourselves until we know exactly what it is that has transpired.” Gabriel is looking at his phone too. “I’m going to go. I will call you. I’ll call everybody, later. Stick together. Take the kids for eggs.”

“She’s already had a bagel,” Padgett says, “and I don’t need a doctor.”

“I should think not,” Gabriel says, and puts a hand on her shoulder. Some night, at some drinks function, the two of them will be alone and only then, not here not now and not all the other times he has leaned in to Padgett like this, will they discuss their long-ago drunk flirtation in the speakeasy space. “It’s just a shock. We need to disperse and take our children home and answers will come soon.”

“But you,” Padgett says, “you think it’s true?”

Gabriel gestures to the chained door as though, for his next trick, he will step into a locked-up-tight building and emerge with the ace of spades. “You’re a typical person,” he tells her. “What do you think, with Ariel shutting it down immediately like this? Sexual accusations, unspeakable, and then the door locked? Once you see what kind of story it is—”