All this churning, and still the letter was only paper. Lexie was her mother’s flesh and blood, her will and fury. Until they found Lexie, I could not feel safe or believe that this was truly over. I wanted her caught, even if it meant she exposed my ugly role in Spence’s death. Marshall had told me to lie if that happened. Deny it. Accuse Lexie of protecting her mother’s memory or still trying to lash out at my family. It would be my word against hers, and I was a Cabbat. She was a junkie. My lie held more weight than her truth, but that echoed back against her history and my own in ways that sickened me. Nevertheless I had told him I would do it.

“She’s probably left the state anyway,” Trey said late that night, when he woke at two to find me mulling all this over, my hand resting on Robert’s busy little heart. “The guys I’ve hired are a precaution. If she has any sense, she’s long gone.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I’d whispered back, with absolutely no conviction.

For all Coral had said she was leaving her child out of it, I knew how dirty Lexie’s hands were. She had helped her mother stalk a toddler. Maybe she hadn’t known Coral’s plan in the beginning, but after Geoff’s murder she’d still helped Coral watch me. She’d let her mother take my child, too. Now Coral was dead with her plan only two-thirds complete. Would Lexie feel she had to finish it? She didn’t come from a family who let things go.

The next day the mail came at eleven, right on time. I put Robert into his bouncy chair and left him with Mills again. I walked down the drive, feeling Lexie’s eyes on me with every step I took.

I opened the mailbox, and there it was. I knew it at once. It was a white cardboard thing, the size of a sheet of paper, tucked between the smaller bills and larger catalogs. The only words on it were my name and address, the handwriting small and spidery, the letters crabbed together. No return address.

I grabbed the whole stack and hurried back inside. In my head, in the two minutes I’d been gone, Lexie had vaulted over the back fence, kicked down my back door, and taken Robert. It was a relief to see him peacefully napping in his chair, his pink mouth working a dream bottle.

Mills looked up from his book. “Everything okay?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, trying to calm my breathing. “Can you sit with him? I’d love to grab a shower. He should sleep at least until noon, and I’ll have the baby monitor in case he wakes.”