Therese picked up the remote control and turned up the volume so loud that all she could hear was a man calling her down to the Auto Mile for a great deal on a Jeep. She hated herself, but in that moment she actually considered leaving everything behind and running. She fought the desire to simply disappear instead of trying to figure out why she felt cracked open, as though what had happened to Leah had also happened to her.

No matter what she did, she could not stop shaking. She thought about her father, the first person to walk away from her without a second thought. Was it because she wasn’t worth it? Was that why he hadn’t chosen her? Then there was Leah, who had always been there for her, yet never asked for anything in return. Leah, who loved her unconditionally.

She stamped out the cigarette that Leah had left smoldering in the ashtray. She could hear Leah crying in the kitchen, steady and low and so constant she knew that it would last a very long time—if it ever did end. She stood in the living room for what seemed like hours.

When Leah didn’t come back, she finally walked out of the house, carrying the basket with the quiet little baby inside, the phone number for the car dealership still ringing in her ears.

She laid the baby, still in her basket, across the floor of the backseat of her car. All she could hope was that maybe Leah would come to her senses. She turned on the radio, trying to find a song to match her mood, but nothing fit, so she turned it off and instead listened to the sound of Matilda’s stroller shifting in the trunk. Even though she knew it was about to happen, each time it slammed into one side, it startled her. She turned the radio back on to muffle the noise. Frances remained quiet.

Nausea began to creep its way back up her throat as she pulled into the driveway and saw Tim’s car parked ahead of her in the middle of the day.

When he should have been at work.

She opened all the windows and turned off the ignition. She decided to leave the baby in the car until she could figure things out. She looked in the rearview mirror, looped her hair behind her ear, and then thought about how to explain to Tim why it was that Matilda had been left alone with Barbara.

As she unlocked the front door, a delicate tingle danced across her arm, but she ignored it, slapping the air as though she was shooing a fly. When she walked inside, she saw that he was kneeling on the ground and Matilda was sobbing, but that wasn’t what caught her eye.

It was the Red. Starting from her nose and streaked down the front of her shirt.