The bracelet would help. It was a trick I’d learned in a college acting class, what felt like a thousand years ago. If some real-life sorrow or anxiety was pulling me out of a role, I could use something physical to locate that distraction in my body. I’d pack my pain or worry inside the squeeze of a tight shoe or the tug of a ponytail holder. Then the rest of my body was free to become someone else.

I’d used a variation of the trick all three times I’d been in labor. I’d pinched the tender spot between my thumb and forefinger as each contraction hit, moving myself into the small pain while my body heaved and surged. The trick had worked in the early stages, until some animal inside me took over and I was nothing more than a will to push.

I was still a mother, but separated from all that made me so. I had to put Robert’s absence into the constriction of the bracelet. I put my fear there, too, the whole choking cloud of it. And my anger with my husband, which was quickly changing into a pure, wild rage at Spence, as cold and clear and biting as grain alcohol. I added my desperate longing for Trey to be here with me, my surges of desire to call the police, and most of all my paralyzing love for my child. I had to let some other woman ride my body.

Be Betsy, I thought then. She’d been bolder than me, always, and dead calm in a crisis. Betsy had owned any room she’d entered. I could almost feel her presence closing over me. My best friend, gone but still saving me.

“You want me to roofie Spencer Shaw?” I sounded as incredulous as I felt. “You want Spence to . . . what? To not remember tonight? Why?”

“Don’t you worry about that. Just you worry about your part.”

Her voice was still gentle. We spoke softly to keep Robert asleep, but the near whispers seemed to pull us closer. Her voice, breathy in my ear, was so intimate, and I desperately wanted to please her. I wanted her to like me. Hell, a small, crazy part of me wanted to like her, too, because she had me wholly in her power. I needed to believe there was sweetness in her. That she liked babies and would be kind to mine. That if I did exactly what she said, she’d give him back.

I said, “Help me understand why you’d do this. I know it’s not money. Can you please tell me what you really want?”

Her voice dropped even lower. “What I want, you can’t give me. Not direct.”

“Maybe I can help you get it. If you—”