That question would have killed Bree Cabbat. But I wasn’t her. I was a woman with a black Visa that said “Elizabeth” on it. I could feel it, heavy in my purse, ready to charge more hours to keep my PI looking.

“I’m not sure,” Marshall said, so gentle. “I know you have a lot of questions, but I want to get back on the trail. Can you answer a few of mine first?”

She nodded but still turned back to me to ask one more. “Have they contacted you?”

“Not so far,” Marshall said, again coming in fast.

Kelly sucked in a breath, still facing me. “If our PI was any good, he would have found you, though, right? Your related-seeming case? Instead you came here. Adam must be right about our guy milking us. Except I don’t really think that came from Adam. I think his wife, his ex, put it in his head. She wants to keep his money for her own kids.”

I could feel Marshall willing me to silence, but she was talking to me, not him. Really me, not some character. I clutched my purse so hard, trying to feel a credit card that wasn’t there through the thick leather.

My face twitched itself into a truer shape, and words got out, asking about the mother. “So you didn’t get a call?” Marshall coughed, sharp, and I belatedly added, “Either?”

She shook her head. “No. No contact. In fact, no one calls us anymore. Not after six weeks. At first, we got a lot of visitors, a lot of food, but now it’s like no one can stand to look at us.” She whirled back to Marshall, desperate. “I think whoever took Geoff must have sold him. Maybe to someone who can’t have babies? Someone nice, and they love him, and they don’t know he’s stolen. Do you think that’s what happened?”

I understood her need to picture Geoff with some wealthy, childless couple, warm and fed and loved. She’d scraped my character off my skin; I was almost only me. She deserved to know her son was gone. This not-knowing—it was the only hell that looked worse than the one I was facing. But Marshall’s eyes held a clear warning. If I wanted Robert back, I had to be quiet now.

It was hard to keep on looking at her; she had that right. I looked around the room instead, then wished I hadn’t. My mother’s eye picked out half a dozen pale rectangles on the walls where framed photos had once protected the paint from fading. Family photos, or perhaps prints from Where the Wild Things Are or Pete the Cat. In the carpet’s indents, I could see the missing furniture: a toy chest, a low table with a toddler-size chair, a bookshelf that would have been stuffed with picture books and art supplies.