“Hello, Mrs. Cabbat,” she said, quite formal. The voice from the phone. It made my jaw tighten but also pulled me one step closer. We knew each other, she and I. She gestured toward the path behind me. “That’s your husband in the driver’s seat down there?” I nodded, glancing back. The stairs were too steep for her to have watched my ascent, but I could see the lot, and the cars, and the gray road snaking away through the hills and trees. Trey was a shadowy shape in the driver’s seat. “He needs to come up now.”

“In a little. I told him I’d wave when it was time.” Sabreena Kroger’s voice, shaky and unconfident. Southern. Shy. I hadn’t been this girl in two decades, but I wasn’t acting. This was a true creature, pulled out from the deepest places inside the woman I’d grown into. This was the girl Coral Lee Pine felt for, connected with. At the same time, I was Robert’s mother, here to fight her tooth and claw. I could hold both. I knew I could. It was the most important thing the theatre had ever taught me. “I wanted to talk to you first. Just us.”

“I thought you might. Please, pull up a seat.” There was another bench, sitting aslant, nearby. I came closer and sat down on it. “I’d offer you tea, but . . .” She smiled for the first time, wide, almost a grimace. I was shocked by all the dark gaps in her mouth. So many of her teeth were gone. She gestured at the china cups. “This is not for you.”

I felt my skin trying to shudder itself off my body. “I know. It’s for Trey. And you.” She dipped her chin in a small acknowledgment. “Is it the same drug I gave Spencer?” She nodded, and I made myself meet her gaze as I told her, “It’s not a good way to go.”

She shrugged. “I used a lot. It will be faster. It will be very, very fast.” She picked up the cup closer to her, considering its dark contents. “Call Mr. Cabbat up now, please. He can have his tea, and we’ll wait a little. Then I tell you where to find your boy and have a drink myself.”

Time felt as if it were moving so slowly. Too slowly. I wondered if my timer had somehow turned itself off in my pocket. Surely seven minutes had passed? “I want to talk to you first.”

She shrugged. “You don’t have much time.” She lifted her cup to me in a mock toast, as if readying to drink it, Trey or no Trey.

I felt a chill of doubt in my spine. Marshall had convinced me that Robert was here, but if so, if she killed herself now, we would find him easily. She would never allow that. I knew it. Was Marshall wrong?