I slipped the burner phone into my purse. I walked back to the hotel. I never did try the honey cake. Kyle had woken up and I slid into the bed next to him and lied about what I’d done, who I’d seen. I kissed him to stop his questions.

I can write stuff like that now because after today this journal isn’t for you anymore. It’s for me.

I didn’t tell Kyle about the warning woman or the phone in my purse or the money in the offshore account. I just told him I loved him and listened to him talking about teaching Sasha to play football and baseball and that he’d get him a telescope so they could look at the craters on the moon together, the giant red spot on Jupiter, and then we called Julia and talked to her on the phone so she could hear our voices, and we listened to her giggle and I thought of that woman and that money and the choice she told me I had to make.

I didn’t tell Danielle, but I called Pavel at his apartment and asked him for a favor while Kyle was in the shower. I asked him to call Maria and ask how many children total are at Volkov. He called back and told me one hundred fifty-seven.

I’m sure they all deserve love. A chance. A shot at happiness. A hundred and fifty-six candidates. Maybe the child that is truly perfect for us is one of them.

Or maybe we’ve already found the one who is.

38

Kyle

Kyle has gotten dressed for work in a nice suit but is lying atop the made bed in the master bedroom. He just lay down for a second and he has no energy to rise. As if the world is pressing down on him.

He closes his eyes to think. He is surprised that Julia is going to school, given what happened on Sunday, but she missed Monday and now it seems she’s going. Ned, too, but maybe it will help Ned to have his friends around him. Kyle is pretty sure no schoolwork will get done this day.

Iris is in Grant’s bedroom. A mother is in a teenage boy’s room for this long for only one reason, and that is to search it. He wonders if Grant found the bloodied library bag he hid in the tree and that is what Iris has found. She has been in there for a long time, and he just hopes she doesn’t come out with a bag of weed (very un-Grant-like).