For a moment it felt like someone had plugged her into an electrical socket. Fear charged through her limbs, settling in her bowels like greasy food. She doubled over, hitting her forehead on the lip of the desk, but hardly feeling it. Bent with her head between her knees and her hands clutching her calves, she pushed air through her lips to keep from wailing. Everything inside Winnie was screaming, but she had to keep control. She lifted her head again, glanced briefly at the screen before exiting out of it, and turned the computer off. She wanted to ask Nigel if this was some sort of cruel joke, but she knew in her gut he’d never do something like that, not when his hands were as covered in guilt as hers. There was also the fact that neither Nigel nor her son liked to read library books; it was new or nothing. Either way, she had to find out.

She texted Samuel. Did you check out a library book lately?

Last time I went to the library was on a fourth-grade field trip.

Why couldn’t he just answer her? It was yes or no—that simple. Everything had to be a snarky little game with him. If she’d said that to her own mother when she was Samuel’s age…

And then all of her anger evaporated. She was lucky he’d even answered; lately, he wanted nothing to do with her. That was the essential difference between her mother’s parenting and her own: her mother didn’t care what her kids thought of her. Winnie tried not to think about how much she cared as she got up from the desk to check the junk drawer for her library card. She rifled past a hairbrush with a broken handle, a jump rope, and a box of press-on nails before she found it. It was under the stack of instruction manuals and receipts, pushed to the far corner of the drawer. She held it in her palm, staring at it hard. The library must have made a mistake; she’d sort it out.

But when she called the library, they said she had indeed checked out Child Abduction: A Theory of Criminal Behavior on October 5.

“It wasn’t me,” she said firmly. “I haven’t been to the library in years. I don’t even know where my library card is!” She glanced guiltily at the junk drawer.

“Well then somebody else has your card,” said the guy on the other end of the line. “And they owe five dollars and seventy-two cents in fees. Will you be paying it? I can take your debit card right over the phone.”