I turned off the car, then got out and ran to my door, hoping this was what she’d wanted me to see. Hoping this would tell me what she wanted. We could pay. If we didn’t have enough, Trey’s family would help. They had never fully warmed to me. They’d liked his first wife, Buckhead born and with the right last name, so much better. But they doted on my babies. Especially Robert, their last and littlest grandchild. The only boy, which mattered way more than it should to my father-in-law. But now I was glad. He would help us. We would pay, and she would give Robert back.

I pulled the bag off the knob. It was light, but I could feel items shifting in the bottom of it. If that old woman had left it, then she’d come in plain view of our front-door camera. The video would already be uploaded to my cell phone.

I let myself in, hurrying through the house, back into our great room, where I dumped the bag out onto my kitchen island. There was a cheaply made smartphone with no casing and no screen protector. This was from the woman who had Robert, then. Had to be. This was how she would tell me where to bring the money. There was also a charging cord and an old Bluetooth, the flat triangular kind that tucked up close beside the ear. The last thing in the bag was a bottle of prescription medication, which struck me as odd. Not related to the other things.

I got out my own cell phone and checked the app that linked to our security camera. One new video had been uploaded almost immediately after I left the house, according to the time stamp. I pressed play.

It was her. The witch I’d seen peering in my window when I was half dreaming. The meemaw I’d shown Marshall at the school. I’d known it all along, but it still sounded a bell of shock deep down inside me. She could have shaded her face with the hat, but instead she locked gazes with the camera. How blatant she was. How bold.

Her eyes were dark pits, deep-set under sparse brows, and her face was webbed in wrinkles. She had sagging jowls and a long, sharp nose. She had to be seventy, at least. I hit pause and used the capture feature to get a still shot. I pulled the picture up onto the screen, staring at her grainy face, looking for softness. She was all angles, with a grim set to her mouth.