As we entered the Wilkersons’ neighborhood, I tried to set all this aside. These thoughts belonged wholly to Bree Cabbat, and I could not be her now. I packed away my daughters, safe with my vigilant mother, and my husband, flying home early for all the wrong reasons. Hardest of all, I tucked Robert, safe and sleeping, into a warm sanctuary at the bottom of my brain. I also tried to forget that Geoff was dead. I would soon be face-to-face with his parents. The character I was playing did not know what had happened to their son.

The rain eased to a drizzle as Marshall’s GPS guided us toward their house. The mother had spoken of the Wilkersons as if they were rich, but I’d taken that with a grain of salt. I knew from when I was little that even the lower rungs of the middle class looked pretty damn rich when you were poor. But this neighborhood was definitely upper-middle-class; gracious old Tudors and Colonials were mixed in with some outsize newer builds, all lining streets that spread out behind a country club, many with views of the golf course.

“How much do community-college professors make?” I asked.

“Not this much,” Marshall said, giving me a one-sided smile.

I knew that the boxy McMansion with its three tiers of symmetrical windows belonged to the Wilkersons before I saw the house number. It was the only home on the street with untrimmed bushes and a ragged lawn. They must have forgotten to schedule their service.

We cruised past. There was an older-model BMW parked in the drive, and the dark sky let us see that there were lights on inside.

“Someone’s home,” I said.

Marshall hadn’t called in advance. Calling would give them two hours to decide if they’d meet with us or what they’d tell us, and he wanted to see their reactions fresh. I’d worried that no one would be home, but if that were the case, Marshall planned to stake out the house while I took a rental car back to Decatur. No matter what, I had to be home before Trey. If he found our house empty, he might panic and call my mother or the police.

Marshall turned the corner before parking his old Taurus. We’d gotten a Lyft back to the Botanical Garden to pick it up. We left it out of sight and headed back down the street to the Wilkerson house; he didn’t want them to see the make and model or, worse, think to write down his plate number.

The drizzle was now a mist. Not enough for umbrellas, just enough to make us hurry.