I end the call and look down at my phone, willing it to buzz immediately. Owen, calling back, with a good explanation. It’s one of the reasons I love him. He always has a good explanation. He always brings calmness and reason to whatever is going on. I want to believe that will be true even now. Even if I can’t see it.

I slide over so Bailey can jump into the driver’s seat. And I close my eyes, running through different scenarios as to what could possibly be going on. Innocuous, reasonable scenarios. He is stuck in an epic work meeting. He lost his phone. He is surprising Bailey with a crazy present. He is surprising me with some sort of trip. He thinks this is funny. He isn’t thinking, at all.

This is when I hear the name of Owen’s tech firm—The Shop—coming from my car radio.

I turn the radio up, thinking I imagined it. Maybe I was the one who said it in my message to Owen. Are you stuck at The Shop? It’s possible. But then I hear the rest of the report, coming from the NPR host’s slick, grippy voice.

“Today’s raid was the culmination of a fourteen-month investigation by the SEC and the FBI into the software start-up’s business practices. We can confirm that The Shop’s CEO, Avett Thompson, is in custody. Expected charges include embezzlement and fraud. Sources close to the investigation have told NPR that, quote, there is evidence Thompson planned to flee the country and had set up a residence in Dubai. Other indictments of senior staff are expected to be handed down shortly.”

The Shop. She is talking about The Shop.

How is this possible? Owen is honored to work there. Owen has used that word. Honored. He told me that he took a salary cut to join them early on. Nearly everyone there had taken a salary cut, leaving bigger companies behind—Google, Facebook, Twitter—leaving big money behind, agreeing to stock options in lieu of traditional compensation.

Didn’t Owen tell me they did this because they believed in the technology The Shop was developing? They aren’t Enron. Theranos. They are a software company. They were building software tools set to privatize online life—helping people control what was made available about them, providing child-easy ways to erase an embarrassing image, make a website all but disappear. They wanted to be a part of revolutionizing online privacy. They wanted to make a positive difference.

How could there be fraud in that?

The host goes to commercial and I reach for my phone, flipping to Apple News.

But just as I’m pulling up CNN’s business page, Bailey comes out of the school. She has a bag swung over her shoulder and a needy look on her face that I don’t recognize, especially directed at me.