Ronnie didn’t wait around to see what he’d do next. She grabbed Esme and ran, this time circling to the front door. It wasn’t until she was nearly tripping over the figure in the front hallway that she realized someone was lying there. Ronnie looked down and screamed. Her sister, Vanessa, was in a battered heap on the ground. Her bruised eyes were crusted shut.

No, Ronnie gasped. How had she missed Vanessa? She cursed herself for not being here when things went wrong. This was why she’d quasi-moved in with the couple, after all. To watch over her sister. To watch over the baby. To make sure Jerrod didn’t get too drunk and beat her sister to a pulp. To make sure Vanessa didn’t use so much that she couldn’t care for her kid. To try to . . . save her and Esme somehow. You have to leave him, she’d said to her sister, when Jerrod had broken her arm, two months before. Before he hurts you or Esme. We can leave together. And Vanessa had nodded, her eyes big and sad, nails digging into the skin around her knees. I know, she said. Okay, I’ll think about it.

But Vanessa never made any moves. Excuses piled up—she shouldn’t be so moody around Jerrod. She did this or that the wrong way. Jerrod worked long, hard hours; he was tired; he was hungover; he was hungry; he wanted sex but she was too tired; he was frustrated by how the baby kept them both up; he’d never do it again.

But now here Vanessa was, not responding. Ronnie held her sister’s baby in her arms, trying to figure out what to do next. Whatever decision she made would change her life.

A click broke her from her thoughts. Ronnie straightened up, pressing her fingers against the wood grain of the supply closet’s door. How long had she been crouched here? It felt like hours. She was being ridiculous. What did she think she would discover, hiding out here? And then she considered something else—what if the drawing wasn’t even meant for her? What if there had been some sort of technical glitch and it had been uploaded to Esme’s device when it was really meant for another child’s? Ronnie hated the idea of any kid saying they hated their mother . . . but it was possible it was a mistake.

But when she poked her head out the door, there was someone there. A slip of a figure kept close to the wall, creeping by one of the far doors that led to the rooms for the under-two toddlers and babies. Like Esme’s class, these children also kept their coats and backpacks and other items in cubbies in the hallway. The figure scanned each cubby as though looking for something, then hunched over one in particular.