I set down my phone and go for the whiskey that I brought from Seattle. Though I expected we’d be together this weekend, I knew there would be plenty of time for me to sit and sulk and drink. I pitched the weekend as a chance for us to get back on track, and Sophie accepted the pretext. I mean accepted in the way someone agrees to come to your kid’s baseball game. They don’t want to be there. They don’t get anything out of it. But they come because you asked and they were too slow to drop an excuse that you couldn’t easily torpedo with a feigned look of disappointment.

I don’t talk about the state of our marriage to anyone. I never have. I’ve always had the feeling that Sophie is the same way. She’s like her mother. She retreats and keeps things inside. She learned that from watching Helen as she built an invisible wall to keep Frank at bay. I am not Frank. I am not a thing like him. But learned personality traits aren’t often based on present reality but on a past from which there is no escape. Our marriage is quietly rocky. Silently in shambles. I love her without a scintilla of doubt. But Sophie? I don’t know how she really feels about me. If she loved me at all, she’d have never done what she did.

I take a slug of whiskey from the bottle, and the sweet burn fills my throat with familiarity. Thinking of Sophie has always been my drinking game. It’s funny to love someone so much that it hurts.

I call Helen.

“How’s Aubrey?” I ask.

“Anything new there?” she asks, her voice breaking with worry.

“No. Nothing. Haven’t heard a peep. How’s Aubrey?”

“She doesn’t understand what’s going on, so she’s fine.”

I can hear Helen’s voice fracture a bit more. It’s easy to forget that inside her cool and placid exterior is a human being. Not nice to think, I know. But that’s how I’ve always seen her.

“Frank’s foaming at the mouth,” she says, pulling herself away from the emotion that is making her shatter.

“What’s he doing now?”

“He’s in his office. He’s been on the phone with everyone from the FBI to the news media.”

“The FBI?”

“Kidnapping,” she says. “Frank’s convinced that someone’s got Sophie and will ask for ransom. Of course he’ll pay. I know you would too.”

“Of course,” I tell her, “but there’s no ransom. This isn’t a kidnapping.”

She doesn’t say anything for a second. She’s thinking about what her husband has told her to say to me.

“We don’t know that,” she says.

I hear Frank in the background. He’s coming toward the phone.

“Who’s that?” he asks.

“Adam.”

Frank takes the phone. “What are you hearing on your end?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Sheriff’s working it.”

“Didn’t you see those detectives? A couple of backwater idiots if you ask me.”