I wondered if she’d find the missing baby, the baby we weren’t even sure existed. Whether or not Mariah Parish had borne a living child shouldn’t make a bit of difference to me, but I found myself rooting for the Joyces to track down the baby. I suspected that child might not be their grandfather’s offspring. On second thought, if the girls had been so ready to believe Richard Joyce had fathered a child with his caregiver, maybe the baby had been his. But Lizzie and Katie hadn’t been looking in the direction I’d been looking when I told them what had killed Mariah Parish. I’d been looking at their brother and Lizzie’s boyfriend, and they’d looked mighty damn worried. About what, I didn’t know, and I might never find out. But I hoped Victoria would.

Maybe they’d both had sex with Rich’s caregiver. Maybe one of them had impregnated her. Or maybe they were guilty of helping to bury the baby or put the baby up for adoption.

Whatever the brother—Drexell, his name was—had done, I realized it was no concern of mine, and that the search for the whereabouts of baby Parish was not up to me and not in my area of expertise . . . unless the baby was dead. I thought of proposing I help Victoria look for a dead child. But infants were the hardest. They had so little voice. They registered more strongly when they were buried with their parents.

I abandoned thought of the possible child, possibly dead, in the scramble to get ready to pick up the living children that we were kin to. Both girls ran out to our car when we pulled into the Gorham driveway. They seemed happy, looking forward to the afternoon.

“I got an A on my spelling test last week,” Gracie said. Tolliver told her how good that was, and I smiled. But as I looked into the backseat at her, I noticed Mariella was silent and looked a little dampened.

“What’s up, Mariella?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said, which was obviously untrue.

Gracie said, “Mariella has to stay after school and do extra work tomorrow.”

“Why, Mariella?” I made my voice matter-of-fact.

“The principal said I caused trouble in class.” Mariella wasn’t looking at me.

“Did you?”

“It was that Lindsay.”

“Lindsay is a bully,” Gracie said. “We’re not supposed to let people bully us, right? That’s bad.” Gracie looked self-consciously righteous.

I wanted Gracie to butt out. “We’ll talk about it later,” I said, and I thought Mariella relaxed a little bit. I wasn’t used to problems like this; I wasn’t used to children. But I recalled that at Mariella’s age, this would have been an all-consuming issue.