We left the leggings where they lay on the floor in a sad pile of blue sky and lightning. We followed the green exit signs through what seemed like miles of empty aisles: leather goods, lingerie, then into home furnishings.

As we reached the store exit I heard running feet. Someone yelled, “Stop!” When I turned, the tall blond girl was running toward us through the display living room.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Is this some kind of joke?” Her voice shook. Her eyelid was twitching furiously.

“Is something wrong?” I asked her.

She held out a handful of blue and gold fabric. “This,” she said, and turned the leggings inside out. They were lined with white stretchy stuff. Lauren had treated this lining like a piece of blank paper. On it she had written, in her favorite pink marker:

Plaes help. Ted is a kidnaper. He cals me Lauren but taht is not my nam.

And then underneath, she had drawn a map to our house. It was pretty good. She must have been watching carefully as we drove.

“That shit is not funny,” the woman said. “Do you think missing children are a joke?”

I could feel Lauren starting to get upset by her shouting, and by the cursing, so I said, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how that happened. Obviously I’ll pay for them.” I put a twenty and a ten in the blond clerk’s hand, which was much more than the pants cost, and took them from her. She shook her head at us and her mouth was a grim little line.

We walked back through the desert of the parking lot. The sun was high in the sky, now, and heat was shimmering off the asphalt. When we reached the car I said, “Get in please, and fasten your seatbelt.” Lauren obeyed in silence.

I turned on the AC. The cool air began to dry the sweat on my brow, and I let it soothe me. When I could at last trust myself to speak I said, “You must have been planning that one for a long time. Give me the marker.”

“I left it in the store,” Lauren said.

“No,” I replied. “You didn’t.”

She pulled the marker out of her sock and handed it to me. Then she started crying silently. That hurt, it was like a skewer to my heart. “You have to learn that your actions have consequences,” I said.

Lauren’s back heaved with huge sobs. The tears ran in a steady stream down her face. “Please,” she said. “Don’t send me away.”

I took a deep breath and said, “Six months. You can’t come home for six months.”

Lauren moaned. It was a bad sound that made tears poke out in my own eyes.