“Winnie, you don’t have a choice. We go over this year after year. I’m tired of it.” Nigel’s voice, which initially sounded calm, was curling around the words like he was struggling to pronounce each one. He’s fed up, Juno thought—any minute he’s going to blow.

“You’re tired of it? Oh my God, Nigel. It was the worst night of my life and you’re tired of it?”

She couldn’t hear what Nigel said. Juno found herself leaning away from her pillow, trying to—

“It wasn’t you! You can’t know how this feels!”

Juno rolled on her back as Winnie dissolved into noisy tears.

“No. You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to steal someone’s infant—”

The whole of Washington State could have shaken just then, and Juno wouldn’t have noticed. She was frozen in shock as reality wobbled around her; then there was a very loud clap that she assumed was Winnie’s hand meeting her husband’s face, followed by a much louder eruption of words. They continued to shout for a while longer before Winnie stormed off to the bedroom, her footsteps pounding up the stairs dramatically.

Juno lay very still, Nigel’s words playing over and over in her mind. Steal someone’s infant…? What had Nigel meant? Surely not Sam. Juno had gleaned that Winnie had worked as a mental health counselor for some years before shifting to a management position in a similar field. Perhaps she’d reported someone to child protective services, and they’d had their baby taken away unfairly. But Nigel wouldn’t have said those words with such bitterness if that were the case—if Winnie had just been doing her job.

She rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. Could that be the secret Winnie had been harboring? The reason behind the depression she wrote about in her journal? That Sam wasn’t hers and Nigel’s—that she had stolen him? But Sam looked like his mother. Juno had always thought that—that he looked like his mother. They shared the same high forehead and wide-set eyes. Her son’s hair was darker than Winnie’s, though Juno suspected she was a bottle blonde—but so what? Kids didn’t always precisely resemble their parents. But what bothered her was Nigel and Winnie’s wariness around him, like they were tiptoeing over everything. Sam knew it, too, didn’t he? Wolves know when they’re being raised by bears.

Yes, that was it, Juno thought. Sam was the minefield they were tiptoeing around. But how had it happened?

9

WINNIE