Then he was gone. My spine sagged. I almost sat down right there on the hard stone floor. I leaned against the arch instead, digging in my purse for the cheap phone. The mother had told me to text her as soon as I got the pills down Spence, but I wanted to call. I wanted to hear my son breathing or eating or even crying.

There was only one number in the contacts. Robert. I stared at his name, as if the letters could bring me closer to him. I would have him soon, back in my arms. Tomorrow, she’d said. I pressed the message icon instead of the call button. I wanted to do everything perfectly. The hard part was over. I could not mess up now.

It’s done.

It took an endless span of seconds for her to answer. I could see the dot-dot-dot in the window. My heart was still pounding, and I still felt dizzy, but I could not fall apart. Not yet. Not until I had him back.

Good. Now go home.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t. Not without more assurance.

When will you give him back? I felt my body shivering.

When it’s finished. Go home.

I couldn’t tell if she was being reassuring or threatening, or if she was scared, like me. The words could be read as cold, but I remembered the tremble in her voice. Her own child was here, up to something risky. The daughter had to intercept Spence now, tempt him away from the crowd. The mother had to be so frightened for her child. We were alike in this.

My clammy hands texted, I understand. I will get out of your daughter’s way. But please, can you please tell me when I’ll get Robert back?

STOP TEXTING ME AND GO HOME. I’ll call you in the morning.

I felt my head shake back and forth. The morning was a thousand years from now. She’d said “tomorrow” from the start. But I had done what she asked, and I wanted Robert now.

Then a wild hope rose. What if the instructions for getting him back were at my house already? She could have left them there, the way she’d left the phone and the bottle of pills, hanging on my door. She could be setting Robert himself down in my backyard, his infant carrier crushing the basil plants by the window where I’d first seen her. It was a crazy thought, but that didn’t change the effect. All at once I was moving, almost running, flushed with new urgency. Roofies worked fast. Ten minutes, fifteen, Google said. I had to get out, get home, and not see the face of the woman who came to gather up a reeling, slurring Spence. If the mother thought I was a threat to her child, she’d be a threat to mine.