Madeline should have skipped that day. She’d been sick to her stomach ever since hearing the news about Sophia two days earlier. Little eating, no sleeping. A friend from the studio Yoga for Life! had shared the news on Facebook, and when Madeline saw it, she literally sank to the floor, crumpling onto the shitty tiles in her kitchen like discarded clothes. She wanted to sleep somewhere else that night. Wanted to feel safe. She resorted to wedging a kitchen chair under the knob of the door to her apartment and kept a large cast-iron skillet next to her bed. Weaponized kitchenware. The best she could do.

She felt marginally safer in the early-fall daylight. She had gone to Biology only because there was a test, and Madeline never skipped tests or quizzes. She walked faster than normal, operating under the assumption that moving quickly would keep her from harm. Walk with a purpose. Act confident. When she made it inside, she planned to collapse into bed, pull the covers over her face, and maybe never come out. And keep the skillet nearby.

Or maybe it was time to move on. Try a new place. Avoid the trouble that seemed to be swirling around her.

As she approached her building, she saw someone standing at the bottom of the fire escape. A woman, middle-aged or older, in a white shirt and tan pants, her bobbed hair mostly gray. She smiled when she saw Madeline, like she recognized her. And Madeline froze about twenty feet away, uncertain if she should proceed.

The woman lifted something that glinted in the midday sun. Something gold.

“Madeline, I’m Detective Wallace with the Gatewood Police. I was hoping I could ask you a few questions.”

Madeline stayed rooted in place. She felt like one of those stupid animals, a deer or an opossum, that thought if it stayed still long enough and didn’t move, a predator would attack something else. Even though this woman bore no resemblance to a predator, Madeline hoped she didn’t have to talk to her. Cops had put her on edge ever since her childhood. A cop showing up unannounced never led to anything good. They’d shown up once when she was four and taken her mom away for leaving the scene of an accident. Later, much later, she learned her mom had been drunk and had hit a parked car. Madeline went to live with her grandparents for a time after that. Her mom was in jail—she had to go somewhere.

And more than once the cops came because of one of her mom’s boyfriends. Madeline called them herself once when one of the guys shoved her mom against the dishwasher. But the guy told the cops it was an accident, and her mom refused to press charges, and Madeline never looked at the police the same way again since they didn’t seem to care.