Quinn is cold and sweating. After hours of searching, she’s back home; she kept thinking maybe Maddie’d gone back home, was stuck outside at the door. She kept thinking maybe someone called the cops. She thinks her only option is to call Alice to come help her. If they take Maddie from her this time, Quinn feels certain, they will not ever give her back. She does not deserve to be a mother, Quinn thinks. She should have called someone as soon as Maddie went missing. She’s scared, and Maddie’s alone, probably cold and hungry. But there’s no one she can call who won’t also threaten, once they’ve found her, to take her from her. Alice might well do this too.

She drafts eleven text messages before she settles on the one she thinks she’ll send to Alice. She almost presses send, then walks through the house one more time and finds Maddie’s phone under her bed. She sees, there, a text from Alice of a Christmas tree. It’s perfect, big and full and gorgeous, and Quinn feels the fury rise up in her. Bitch, she whispers. She sits on her daughter’s bed and throws the phone against the wall.

“Maddie?” says Alice, hardly thinking. It’s early morning. Her phone rang, and Maddie’s face popped up, and she answered, excited, then embarrassed by how quickly she’d picked up.

“It’s me,” says Quinn, her voice shaking.

“What’s wrong?”

Alice waits, her upper back and shoulders tensing, as she hears Quinn start to cry.

“You okay?” Tess asks Alice, still sweating, just back from her run. Kate comes up into the kitchen, sleeves rolled from putting the turkey in the basement oven. The kids and husbands—besides Henry who’s in the barn, working—are still in bed.

Alice sets the phone down on the counter, places both her hands on the back of a close-by chair. “Maddie,” she says.

“Who?” Tess says.

“My . . .” starts Alice. “A girl. A case of mine. She’s missing. Since last night.”

“Is something wrong?” asks Martin from the entrance to the kitchen.

“Her child,” Kate says, then reddens. She turns to the stove, starts making breakfast.

“A client of mine is gone,” Alice says.

“Do they live close by?” Tess says.

“About three miles,” Alice says, her voice steady. “In the condos close to town.”

Kate holds her hand over the pan, waiting for it to heat up.

“Do you . . .” Tess starts. “Is it possible she’s with the dad?”

“There is no father,” Alice says. “I mean—there was, I guess, but he’s not around.”

“Is there any reason she would run away?”