“Scary,” Kate says.

Tess jumps and almost says she’s sorry, but then instead they both pretend she didn’t jump. She resents the men, as they pull on their coats and boots. It’s self-delusion passed to them not just structurally but chemically: entitlement so deeply embedded they believe they can help solve any crisis. Their boots bound loudly out the door, keys and phones and wallets shoved in hands and pockets. Tess butters toast, then puts on jelly, puts it onto plates, and passes them to Kate to spoon the eggs over.

They pile into Henry’s truck, and Alice can’t figure out why Josh and Martin won’t stop talking. She hates how thrilled they seem, invigorated, while she can hardly breathe. Maddie’s missing, she wants to scream in each of their faces. But they don’t know her, this girl Alice loves but cannot talk about because she’s not hers.

“I can’t imagine it,” Tess says.

They both stay quiet, watching Colin grab his plate, then the twins. They both know, of course—yesterday morning, with Colin; every time at the playground when they couldn’t see them; those times the sitter did not immediately text back; sitting in the chair at the dentist, phone far away in their bag; running an errand, accidentally leaving the phone on the counter, reaching a hand in an empty pocket the whole time—both of them have spent every second that their kids have been alive imagining this type of loss.

Henry’s mostly quiet, driving. He looks at Alice a few times; she looks down, hot-faced, as if he knows, all of a sudden, that she loves Maddie more than she loves him. Josh goes on and on about establishing a perimeter. Alice feels certain that all the language he’s throwing out is straight from the hours she knows he spends—instead of helping with the children—unwinding from work, watching Law and Order: SVU.

The roads all wind, and Alice feels nauseous. She’s prone to car sickness, and usually when she and Henry drive together she’s the one to drive. She’s still not used to all the trees, the quiet, the looming mountains. When they started telling people they were moving up here, all anyone said was, It’s beautiful, or, It’s so quiet. When had everyone gotten together and decided these two things were valuable, necessary? If this were the city, and Maddie had gone missing, someone would already have found her, some kindly MTA employee would be waiting with her until Quinn arrived. Out here there’s no end to what might happen, what might snatch her, sting her, maul her, what she might have fallen from.