She locked the front door and got on her bike. She wondered if Tyler had told Mary what had happened. She thought he must have, yet she wasn’t afraid to go back to the Griffins’. Rather, she wished she were already there, enmeshed in what she justly deserved.

When she arrived at the house, she propped her bike against the garage and felt stuck, her hands glued to the handlebars. She simply had to put one foot in front of the other, she told herself. She would knock on the door instead of using her key. Mary would answer, and then it would begin. Maybe Mary would send Tyler to his room. Maybe she would hold him by the shoulders and use him as a prop. Josie could feel her heart accelerate, her breath grow shallow. She pushed her back against the garage, dug her hands into her pockets, and tried to steady her breathing.

She looked at the trees. They were enormous, and she realized that somehow without her knowing they had lost all their leaves. It was unnerving to think that hundreds of hours of time had simply slid by. She tried to calculate how many. She could remember helping Tyler make a collage with brightly colored fall leaves. That must have been in September—forty days ago? Fifty? And there were twenty-four hours in a day. Twenty-four multiplied by fifty equaled one thousand? She wasn’t sure. If she added up the hours one by one, it would be easier to calculate. She could start with the first of September.

She had started to count when she heard the front door open. She froze, and then Mary turned the corner carrying a garbage bag.

“Jesus, you scared me,” Mary said.

Josie was silent. Mary’s hair was pulled back in a pony-tail, and Josie could see the strawberry birthmark on her neck. She concentrated on it and waited.

“Listen,” Mary said. “Your father called.”

“What?” Josie asked.

“You need to call him.” She paused. “Now.”

Her father only called on the Griffins’ home phone when she didn’t return the messages he left on her cell phone.

“Oh,” Josie said. She was confused and taken off guard. “All right.”

“You need to call him now,” Mary said, and threw the garbage bag in the trash can.

“Fine.” She stood still for a moment, waiting for Mary to add something, but she didn’t. Josie walked tentatively into the house. Mary followed and went immediately upstairs.

Josie felt she was in some kind of light dream, aware that she could wake up at any moment. She walked into the kitchen and picked up her cell phone from the counter. Upstairs Madeline shrieked, and Josie listened to her giggle. She dialed the number, and it rang, six, seven, eight times. Finally a woman answered.

“Who’s this?” Josie asked.