She grasped Ava’s shoulder, directing the girl’s attention to her face. “Whatever happened is not your fault, honey. Okay? You went to sleep. You’re allowed to rest. You must sleep to function and survive.”

“But I could have called nine-one-one.”

“And you could have been hurt, which would have been the last thing your parents would want.”

Tears streamed down Ava’s face. She opened her mouth to respond, but no sound emerged.

“You are here, and you’re safe,” Imani continued. “Believe me, that’s what your mom cares about. It’s what your dad would care about. And the police don’t even know what happened.”

Imani glanced at the detectives, silently urging them to repeat what she’d said.

If Calvente or Powell understood what she wanted, they weren’t in a mood to listen. Instead, they seemed to take her deliberate stare as permission to continue their interview.

“What time did you leave the house this morning?” Detective Calvente asked.

“I don’t know. Around eight, I think.”

“You’re not sure?”

Imani released Ava’s shoulder to return her attention to the cops. Detective Powell was writing in a notepad.

“School starts at eight fifteen, and it takes Ava five minutes to walk there,” Imani offered. “Around eight would make sense.”

Detective Powell scrawled something in response.

“And did you see either of your parents this morning?” Detective Calvente asked.

Ava shifted to face them head-on. “You know I didn’t. You know because you’ve been implying that my dad died last night while I was upstairs. So you know that I walked right out. The den is at the garden level. I never went farther down the stairs than the front door. I walked straight out while my dad was there and—”

“Did you see any sign of your mom?” Detective Powell interrupted, no doubt trying to squeeze in one last question before another crying jag. From the intensity of the cops’ attention, Imani suspected that this was what they’d wanted to ask all along. A shudder ran down her spine. They thought Melissa had done it and run off, she thought. Or they were at least considering the possibility.

“I left the house without saying good-bye to anyone, without even looking for them.”

“Does your home have security cameras?” Detective Calvente asked.

Ava’s eyes remained trained on her hands. “No.”

Detective Calvente shot her partner a quick glance, conveying her doubt. Everyone had web-connected security cameras nowadays. Imani remembered a conversation with the Walkers from years earlier in which Nate had adamantly argued that they were all exposing themselves to Russian hackers with their Nest cams.

“Nate was concerned about videos uploading to the cloud, being accessed by strangers and ending up on celebrity websites,” Imani offered. “It was a privacy issue.”

Detective Powell wrote something in his notebook. “Guess that explains why we didn’t find a camera on the door,” he mumbled.