“Isn’t it?” Something else had settled across Nigel’s face. Winnie recognized it; Nigel got like that when he was playing a game and winning. She thought about the way he moved his bottle of liquor around to throw her off. Everything was a game to him.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Nigel.” The truth was that she didn’t feel capable of talking about it anymore. A line had been crossed, the trust they’d worked so hard to rebuild, kicked out from under them like a wobbly stool. She didn’t know how to put into words what she was feeling because there were no words for it.

Everything in her life was coming off the rails: her marriage, her relationship with her son, and her mental health. She was either being stalked, or she was imagining being stalked, and quite frankly Winnie didn’t know what was worse. There was no one to turn to, not a soul who would understand. She couldn’t leave him because of what she’d done, and he couldn’t leave her because of what he’d helped her do. They were tied together in this life. Winnie locked herself in the bathroom, wishing she had a bottle of wine.

Nigel retired to his den, where Winnie assumed he’d be spending the night. After he’d gone, Winnie made some tea and sat at her computer, trying to get her mind on something else besides the storm that was her life.

She was checking her email, aggressively sipping at chamomile tea, when she clicked on a message sent by the King County Library system. Winnie had seen enough of these back in the day to know what it was before she clicked on it. After Samuel was born, she’d read voraciously for years, making regular trips to the library with him strapped to her chest. Occasionally she’d read a book she really liked and then, instead of returning it, she’d read it again; that always amounted to fines. But she hadn’t cared, they’d been worth it. And sure enough, when the body of the email downloaded to her screen, Winnie’s suspicion was confirmed: a library fine.

But that couldn’t be right. Winnie hadn’t been to the library in years, like at least four or five. Not to mention she didn’t have a clue where her library card was. It had to be an error in the system, or a ghost email haunting her from her inbox past. Looking more closely, she saw that it was a fine for a book that had been checked out on October 5 of this year. Winnie leaned closer to the screen to read the name of the book she’d supposedly checked out; it was in fine print like a little librarian elf typed it—Child Abduction: A Theory of Criminal Behavior.