But after she told me how much, surely she would let me call my husband. To get the money. He could decide if we should call the police. Or some kind of professional. There were people whose job was to negotiate with kidnappers, freelancers who didn’t care about catching bad guys or any of the rules. I’d seen a movie about one of them, or a TV show. They only cared about getting the baby back. Maybe it would be better, safer, smarter, to call that kind of person. Trey would know. I found my head nodding itself, up and down, and I could breathe better. Soon I wouldn’t be alone in this. Together Trey and I were stronger. We’d get him back.

I was at the turn into my neighborhood, but the light was red. An outsize SUV was in front of me, blocking my way in. My watch said I had six more minutes. The light stayed red and stayed red, and I screamed, a long, harrowing howl, beating my hands against the wheel. A woman in the car beside me, a young mother with a toddler strapped in the back, turned to look at me, openmouthed. The toddler looked, too, eyes as round as quarters. I stared back, and I hated her. She had her baby buckled in safe behind her. She had everything I wanted. Whatever she saw in my face made her hastily turn forward again. As soon as the light changed, she took off.

I was in my neighborhood now, but in my panic I’d forgotten about the girls. Safe with Marshall but on their way to my anxious little mother’s place. If they showed up unannounced, if Marshall mentioned how odd I’d been on the phone, she would assume the worst. She always assumed the worst.

“Hey, Siri, call Mom.”

She answered on the second ring. “Hi, sweetie!”

I had to sound normal. I had to do a better job than I had with Marshall anyway. I thought about Anna-Claire, the way she slipped so easily from role to role. I’d just watched her channel Rizzo, and yet her own essential self was alive under every line. She was a girl inside a girl, and both were true.

She’d gotten this from me. A bug, Trey called it fondly. She got bit by your acting bug. Now I had been boiled down to an animal, wild with terror and fury, wholly feral. But I also had to be Bree Cabbat, wife and mother, busy and happy. That person felt so distant, so foreign. I had to make her true. I felt myself nod, thinking. In this scene Bree calls to ask for a favor, and nothing in her tone upsets her mother.