It was dark already, at least in part because of the oncoming storm. Tolliver was driving because of my headache, so I answered the cell phone when it rang. It was Tolliver’s older brother, Mark.

“Hi,” I said. “How are you?”

“Well, I been better,” he said. “Tolliver there?”

I silently handed Tolliver the phone. He disliked driving and talking at the same time, so he pulled over to the side of the road. Mark Lang had been nearly old enough to leave home by the time my mother and his father started living together and eventually got married. He hadn’t liked my mother, hadn’t liked the situation in his home, and had gotten out as soon as possible. For Tolliver’s sake, he’d checked in at the house about every two weeks. He’d also helped to feed and clothe us, and he’d gotten us medical help when we’d needed it and the adults had been too strung out to provide it. And Mark had been especially fond of Cameron, as Tolliver had been of me. The little girls just represented two more sets of needs and wants, to Mark. I could imagine how unhappy he was at being called about Mariella’s disappearance, and I was sure that was his reason for calling Tolliver now.

“He found her,” Tolliver told me now, leaning away from the phone briefly. “Took him an hour.”

That wasn’t bad. I had a few questions, of course, but I decided to let the conversation run itself to a halt before I asked them.

Tolliver hung up soon enough. “They were hiding in Craig’s Sunday school building,” he said briefly.

“What—where is she now?”

“She went home. Craig had run out of food, anyway, so there wasn’t any more fun in it for her.”

We fell silent. There wasn’t any more to say about Mariella. Mariella had seen too much as a kid to ever be innocent, and she’d probably go down the same path as our mother as fast as could be, despite all the Sunday school lessons and hours in Iona’s church, despite the moral teachings and the days of school. So their lives wouldn’t be all work and no play, Tolliver and I had sent funds for extras for Mariella and Gracie: dance lessons, voice lessons, art lessons. All this was a familiar litany in my head, as I tried again to figure out what else we could have done. The court would never have left the girls’ upbringing to Tolliver and me.

My head pounded harder, and I looked at the sky ahead of us anxiously. I knew soon I would see a flicker of lightning.