“He’ll be hungry soon. He’ll want my arms, my smell, my voice.” Any mother would understand these things. “Just tell me what you want. I’ll give it to you.”

I meant, How much? but asking that way turned my baby into a commodity, a thing that could be bought or sold or thrown away. He was a person. A tiny person, so helpless and so dear. My person I had made inside my body, who had only been separate from me for ten short weeks. I could almost still feel him, kicking and spinning at my center. It felt as if she’d torn him out of me.

“We’ll get to that,” she said. “First I have to tell you the rules.”

When she said that, I heard more than age in the shake and creak of her voice. I heard fear. She was afraid. Like me.

I wasn’t sure if this was good or bad. Good, because it made her human. She had my child; I needed her to be human. Bad, because frightened people do such stupid things.

Which meant I had to stop being afraid. For Robert’s sake. I had to help this woman—this other mother—not be scared, too. That almost made me laugh. It was as if I’d seen a way out, and all it would take would be for me to leap up in the air and fly. I did the only thing I could do.

I pretended I was a different woman. One who was not afraid. I pretended it so hard my hands clenched into fists, my nails digging painfully into my palms.

“The rules,” I echoed. Rules were good. Rules made everybody safer.

“One. Tell no one. We keep this between us. I’m giving you a chance to get your baby back, but if you tell anyone, I’ll end this. You understand?”

I didn’t understand. Not what “end this” meant. I could not allow myself to know what she was saying. I was still building this new, less frightened character over myself, someone calm and helpful. A woman who could be trusted to keep rules. “Yes.”

“Two. You keep this phone with you at all times. When I call, you answer. You take it with you to the bathroom, you hold it when you sleep.”

My heart crashed. When I slept? Did they mean to keep Robert overnight? I couldn’t live through that. I didn’t think I could live through one more second, actually, but one second passed, and then another, and I kept on living.

“I understand.”

“Three. Do exactly what I say. Nothing added, nothing skipped. That’s it. Three rules. Follow them and this will all be over tomorrow. For both of us.”

I found myself nodding, as if she could see me. Maybe her daughter could. She might be in my backyard right now, watching.