I try not to react, though it isn’t easy. Why the hell would Teresa have left that baby for me? And why would she have another one in her bag? I think back to that weird feeling I had about her being excited. Is this what she was hiding? Some connection to whoever had been sending the babies all along?

“Even if that’s true, I didn’t know,” I say when I realize that they are still waiting for me to answer. “So how could I be angry?”

“Okay, then maybe you can explain instead why you’re wearing Teresa’s necklace?” she asks. I put my hand to my throat. The cross. The one that’s up against my mom’s ring, the one Teresa gave me for protection. I close my eyes. It had given me such a terrible feeling at the time. But I had ignored that instinct and put it on anyway because I hadn’t wanted to offend her. And now it’s another nail in my coffin. “Our understanding is that she never took that necklace off. It was extremely special to her. Seems unlikely she’d just give it to you. Unless maybe she was dead before the fire started, and that’s when you took it off her? We’ll have to wait for an autopsy to know her cause of death.”

“Come on,” Rachel snaps at the detective. “That’s absurd. Wylie, do not—”

“They were basically holding us prisoner. I mean, that might not be important to you, but it was important to the—”

“Wylie,” Rachel hisses. “Stop talking. Seriously.”

When I look at her, I can feel how desperately she means this. However much of a liar she is, she is truly convinced that talking is bad for me. She may even be right. What do the lies they told us about PANDAS matter now? They’ve taken it all back with a well-timed “so glad we were wrong.”

“We found the matches, Wylie.”

“What matches?”

“Under the mattress in your room.”

“Matches?” I’d think she had to be joking except for the way she keeps staring at me. “Well, I don’t know how they got there.”

“So they aren’t yours?” the detective asks skeptically.

“No,” I say. “They are not mine.”

“Move on, detective,” Rachel says, trying to sound relaxed, confident that we have the upper hand. But I can feel she’s afraid she won’t be able to drag me out of this huge hole I’ve jumped down into. “We’ve been polite and patient. We did as you asked and came here voluntarily to answer your questions. And now Wylie would like to go home.”

The detective presses her lips together. But it is not a smile.

“You were involved in another fire recently, weren’t you?” she asks me, ignoring Rachel. “Six weeks ago? A friend of yours died?”

“You are joking,” Rachel huffs.