Maybe she could. This was the woman who, with her baby freshly missing, had put on a fancy dress and lipstick and lied and lied and lied. Every word and glance and smile at the gala had been a separate deception. She’d fooled him for quite a while, and he had a damn good track record for spotting liars.

“Okay,” he said.

“We’re going to get Robert back,” she said. She came to him then, eyes blazing with hope and so much boldness. She took him by the arms, and in the set lines of her face there was nothing of her anxious, rules-bound mother. This courage was a thing Betsy had fostered in her. It was like seeing a small piece of his wife, alive in her.

Betsy lived on inside him, too. She had formed him. She was the one who’d told him every day, with only her easy, unblinking faith, that he was nothing like his father. That he was the kind of man a person could count on.

“Yes,” he said, against his better judgment. “We’ll get him back.”

Part II
Sons

12

By the time we got to Gadsden, I had half a hundred texts from Anna-Claire, asking to come by the house. The very idea was a horror to me, and not only because she’d find it empty and realize something so much worse than stomach flu was happening. The place felt gutted, pitted, its newly hollow center filled with danger. I told her in no uncertain terms to stay away, as if I believed that she could catch something, as if terror were contagious. Even if I had been at home to smile and lie to her, I did not want her breathing the air.

She pushed me, relentless. She had a global-studies report due Monday. She needed her laptop, and her copy of I Am Malala, and the soft blue hoodie that helped her think. I told her no again, that this bug was very contagious. She insisted with the invincible certainty of a thirteen-year-old that she would not get sick.

Grandma and Peyton can wait in the car. I’ll bring Lysol and spray it in a cloud all around myself as I runrunrun up to my room. Mom. MOM. It will take one second!

“Dear God, this child,” I said to Marshall. Texting with her about these small, real troubles made me feel disoriented, almost dizzy. I remembered that I used to be a woman who cared deeply about her daughter’s book reports. I could not get there from here. I had no patience for her concerns, so far away and foolish.

Then she got my mother to text me, too. Honey? A-C is really worried. I have a surgical mask she can wear to run in. She needs her Malala. . . .