She leaned back in the chair—think, Juno. She knew that of the nearly 800,000 children under age eighteen who went missing each year, more than 58,000 were nonfamily abductions and only about 115 were stranger kidnappings. That was almost two stranger-danger kidnappings to a state every year. That calmed Juno’s nerves. Her previous thoughts sounded kooky, even to herself. A kidnapper’s emotional motive was desperation, and Winnie and Nigel were hardly desperate—selfish, mostly, with a side of entitlement.

Just because she was already on the web page, she copied down a list of names on the notepad Winnie kept next to the computer—names of children who went missing in the US and were never recovered. Recovered was the word the website used. Juno thought that was a silly police word; no parent whose child had been kidnapped would use such gentle words as “never recovered” to describe the lack of closure to their personal tragedy. What she did know was that if a baby had gone missing in 2008 from a perfect little family, it would have been national news, she was sure of it—especially if it were a white baby. That was how the world worked. But there was something else not sitting right with Juno. She tapped the desk with her index finger, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. It was a little like staring at shadows in the dark: she could make out the shapes but the full picture of what was there was missing. “You’re getting old, girlfriend,” she said, exiting out of the internet windows. “But you still have time to expose the truth.”

She groaned as she lifted herself from the chair and limped off to put her laundry in the dryer, but not before tucking the list of names into her pocket.

That night, Juno lay in bed listening to them fight again as she held the piece of paper in her fist. Their fight was the same old, same old. Nigel and Winnie making the rounds, revisiting the wrongs. She was bored of it; she didn’t know how they weren’t.

“I can’t even believe you’re guilting me about something I do for myself after you spent all of that money on the addition!”

“The addition that would be making us money if you let me rent it out!”

“And I made it very clear that I don’t want a stranger in my home—then or now.”

“Well, you got your way, Winnie, per usual. The three of us, secluded in this little world you’ve made for us. I suppose you want thanks, too. Sam is so very grateful that you’ve forced him to be a vegetarian. I am so very grateful that you choose my underwear brand, and schedule my weekends, and tell me how to use my time off.”

“Rent your stupid apartment out,” Winnie said. “But I’m not living here if you do.”

Part Two

THEN

11

JUNO