Thank you, Denise.

“No.” I lay the shirt flat. “I didn’t see her or anyone.”

Can I detect what he went through from the placement of the blood? Will it put me in his shoes? If it would take away a single moment of his pain, I’d live in this shirt, just as it is.

Nella was going to be given in marriage to a widower three times her age with thick glasses and a lazy lower lip that drooped, exposing his bottom teeth. Of course she ran away.

I look up at Amara’s big round eyes, desperate for some kind of answer. Her and Lili’s mother, Wanda, was supposedly killed by an outsider. They must wonder if Dario got her.

“I’m sorry.” I mean it. I am sorry.

I pull loose threads from the pocket and the shirt front.

Dario will have this in his hands.

I thread the needle to match the fabric.

Do a good job for him.

“Did you see—” Lili starts, but Grandma intercedes.

“Enough. Sarah was held captive. She didn’t see anyone else that monster stole. Do your work.”

I open my mouth to deny Dario stole anyone but me. I should defend my husband, who was as horrible to me as he was a savior to others like me. But I snap my lips closed and get to work. The pocket is stretched between my hands so tightly I could rip it in two.

I put it down and start with a running stitch to repair the front of the shirt. It will never be the same. There will always be a scar in the chest. I do my best anyway, keeping it neat and tying a clean knot at the end. The best work I can do. Dario deserves it.

The thread snippers are with the other sharp things, in a little tin manufactured to sell mint drops. When I pick them up, there are single-edge straight razors underneath. They open seams made with thicker thread.

In crueler, more violent hands, they can slice through skin. They’re seam-openers but also bloodletters. I take one with the snippers and lay the blade next to the paper clip, imagining their usefulness in a room without tools.

Do I dare?

Grandma gets called away. You wouldn’t know it by looking at our fast hands and bent necks, but as soon as she’s out, the entire room exhales.

“We’re glad you’re back.” Amara presses out a seam at the ironing board. “We were getting used to you being gone.”

“Speak for yourself,” Denise says around the pins pressed between her lips.

“I didn’t say I was happy about it.” Amara clicks for steam. The iron hisses.

“How do we know he was the one who took the rest of them?” Ginny blurts. “If she didn’t see them?”

“Peter said so,” Lili insists then turns to me. “When he stole you, your father said that same man took some of the others who’ve gone missing. That he’d run off with so many of us, and he was taking you to go with them. I believe him. You should too, Amara. He wasn’t a liar.”