In Alana’s room at the Motel 6 — cheaper than the business-class place where Danny is staying, because Alana is much further from a billion dollars than he is — her phone rings. She sees that it’s Peter calling. Finally. There was no answer before, so she left a voicemail. She smiles. She really needs to hear her daughter’s voice.

“Is she driving you crazy yet?” she asks Peter, still smiling.

Peter doesn’t say anything for so long she thinks the call has dropped. Then he makes a strangled noise that she recognizes as a sob.

Her heart sinks and a dozen different parental fears race through her brain all at once: a car crash a tumor a shooting a hit-and-run a vicious dog an accident in the kitchen a fire she choked she fell she ran with scissors she —

But no, it’s so much worse.

“Grace is missing,” Peter finally says.

“What?”

“The police are looking for her now. I…we…we don’t know exactly what happened. There was…there was someone at the trampoline place. We think.”

Oh no. He will not use that lawyer’s passive voice. He did that all through their divorce: things have changed; mistakes were made; priorities have shifted in my life…

He will not get away with that shit today.

“Peter,” she says as calmly as she can manage, “tell me everything you know. Now.”

He spills out the details. The trampoline place. He let Grace go play on her own. He always does. It’s never been a problem before. Grace got into an altercation and while the other kid was wailing and carrying on, someone led her away. For some reason, the security cameras were down. Nobody got a very good look at him.

He’s so sorry, he says. He wishes he was dead. He promises that he only left her alone for ten minutes — twenty minutes, tops.

Godsdamn it. She wants to reach through the phone and shake him. She is not interested in how he failed. All she wants to know is where her daughter is now.

But he doesn’t know. The police are here. Candace is crying, Alana can hear her wailing in the background. Peter is doing everything he can. He swears.

It’s not nearly good enough.

Alana remembers holding Grace in her arms after she was born. How her doubts about motherhood, about raising a child after her own fucked-up upbringing, all seemed to melt away in that moment. Because she was dizzy with relief at the thought of it: she would only have to be responsible for one life. She was no longer protector of an entire town’s worth of people, all of whom could wander off into the dark at any moment. All she had to do was keep Grace alive.