I couldn’t risk having him connect to the plane’s Wi-Fi, seeing no answers, and texting concerned questions to my mom. I used voice-to-text to send a slew of reassuring lies. I told him I felt fine, now, just resting to recover. I also told him how sorry I was about Spence’s death. Marshall shot me a sideways glance. I suppose I should have said how sorry I was to hear about Spence’s death, but what I’d said had more truth in it. I told Siri to send.

Mom had texted also, asking how I was feeling and telling me that Anna-Claire had finished her report. Her last message said, Honey, don’t be mad, but it looks like Peyton’s left her keys as well. Her purse has nothing in it but nine kinds of lip balm. ☺! Can you check around the house?

Understanding flashed, and then I was swamped with rage aimed at my middle child. Marshall must have come to the same conclusion, because he gave me a rueful glance and said, “I know. I know. But she’s just a kid.”

No way in hell Peyton’s keys were at the house. The mother had them! How else had a seventy-something-year-old woman in poor health gotten inside our eight-foot wooden privacy fence? She’d had keys. To the back gate and all the doors. She could have come inside and taken Robert in the night. Perhaps she had come inside, creeping around, touching our things. She would have seen Trey’s gun safe and the deer guns in the locked glass case, making me, alone, outside the house, a safer target. She’d left her gaudy gift bag hanging on my door, when she could have dumped it brazenly down on the center of my bed.

But then I would have known she had the keys. I swallowed, realizing she still did. We were vulnerable in more ways than I knew, and the rage still washing through me became half fear. Peyton had looked away, making—

That thought cut out before it could finish. I’d looked away, too. I’d lost so much more than keys.

My anger did not abate, it only turned, aiming itself at the mother. She or her daughter had been that close to at least one of my girls. To my Peyton. Close enough to smell her coconut shampoo. Close enough to slip a creepy hand inside her purse.

Peyton wouldn’t have noticed. Trey always joked that our middle child practically kept her eyes flipped around backward to peer deep into her own inventive brain. Either that or she had them pointed at a book.

I voice-texted Mom, Tell Peyton not to worry. I’ve got them.