After Leticia and the cops left, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in our big bed staring at the window. The drapes were open, the way Trey liked them, because once the lights were off, I needed to see out. Lexie Pine had Peyton’s house keys. Or at least no one had found them up at Funtime. Trey had already called a locksmith, who was going to redo all our doors, even our back gate, tomorrow morning. As for tonight I hoped Lexie Pine had not yet learned that her mother’s business was unfinished, but I had to see for myself that she was not standing in her mother’s old footprints, bending my basil plants to press her nose against our glass.

Robert slept between us, my hand on his chest, so that I could feel him breathing. I looked at him, then out the window to our moon-drenched, peaceful yard, back and forth, again and again. The simple act of closing my eyes started a panic attack. So I watched over him until almost dawn, when I was tired enough to drift off without noticing.

I dreamed the concrete stairs that led to Funtime. Coral was waiting for me there. Carousel music drifted down, a garish, joyous waltz. I climbed up to find the painted animals whole again, rising and falling on golden posts. Coral rode astride a perfect lion, noble as Aslan, wreathed in living roses. As I reached the edge of the ride, she smiled at me and checked her cheap watch, and all around me the world exploded into fire and ash. I bolted upright to find a regular sunny Monday. Well, almost regular.

Peyton and Anna-Claire were in the kitchen, arguing over coconut milk yogurt flavors, as if a pair of bulky, silent ex-soldiers from the private security firm that Trey had hired weren’t sitting nearby at the kitchen table. They knew that their brother had been taken by the same woman who the police believed had snuck into the gala and murdered Spencer Shaw, and yet here they were, fussing over the last honey-vanilla. Perhaps the presence of these large armed men relaxed my anxious middle child. My oldest, I thought, was a little bit excited by it all. The drama of having bodyguards appealed to her. She lost out on the yogurt in the end because she was too involved in nine simultaneous group chats to fight for it.

I had to remind myself that they hadn’t known about Robert’s absence until it was over. They’d been at their grandma’s, making cookies, sleeping in. He was safe before they ever knew he’d been in danger.