What Quinn doesn’t say is that that whole time, on those trips to the museum, Quinn was also going to the city to buy heroin. She could buy it close by, too, but she went down there so she would buy it less often than she wanted. What she doesn’t say is sometimes her dealer asked to hold her daughter, and she let him. She left Maddie in the room and went into a bathroom and shot up while he did. That he was completely fine, a person; Maddie almost never cried when she left her with him; she was only gone a small amount of time—but that then, like now, she’d pretended not to acknowledge how often she needed, wanted, to get some time away. Ignoring the consequences. What Quinn doesn’t say is that sometimes she hates being a mother, even as she loves Maddie, and she’s worried now that that’s why Maddie’s gone. She doesn’t tell Alice that she thinks maybe she was a better mother after she shot up. She doesn’t tell her that addiction is compulsion, an act of filling all the gaping holes where love and care might be but are not. She knows that she’s already failed Maddie. Even more shameful, though, than the ways she’s failed, the ways she knows she always will: somewhere, far away, the thought exists inside Quinn’s brain that if Maddie’s really gone, then Quinn can finally fully disappear herself.

Stella is the fastest, Jack right behind, then Colin, then Jamie, then Bea. They bound and trudge, and both twins fall, and Colin grabs the back of Stella’s coat to slow her. Stop! he says. Wait for me! Bea helps the twins up, and they are once again all five bounding forward. Where are we going? Jack says. We’re flying! says Bea.

The clouds have gotten darker, thicker. They’re bright somehow, because it’s still daytime, but Tess hasn’t seen the sun for hours. Sometimes, in Florida with Helen, swimming in the ocean, Tess would get a rush of fear: when she couldn’t touch the bottom, when the kids weren’t within her reach, even though they both knew how to swim. She’d have to still herself, to focus her eyes on both the kids and remind herself to stay steady, to call to Martin to keep his eyes on them so she could go back to shore. She’d call to Helen and to Kate and Alice, tell them she was going running and could they help Martin—trusting herself least of all to keep anybody safe—and then she’d leave them, change into her sports bra and shorts, and go for a run all by herself.