That’s right; Maia is grounded. She’d pulled a disappearing act last night after lying to Cash to get him to drop her off in town. That drama now seems extremely minor, like running out of dinner rolls on the Titanic.

“You don’t have to move on my account,” Irene says, though there is obviously no way she’s going to sleep in Rosie’s room. “The couch is fine.”

“I want to move,” Maia says. “You being here is a good impetus.” She scrunches up her eyes. “Did I use that word correctly?”

Irene can’t help herself; she halfway smiles. “You did.”

“So you’ll stay?”

It’s not in Irene’s nature to accept help from anyone, but she can’t turn down such a sweet offer—besides which, she is the definition of desperate. “I’ll stay until I get back on my feet.”

Suddenly, Huck is before them, dressed in his sky-blue fishing shirt and his visor, a yellow bandanna tied around his neck. “I’m glad that’s settled,” he says.

As Irene is standing at the window watching Huck’s truck wind its way down Jacob’s Ladder, her phone rings. It’s Lydia. Irene hovers her finger over the screen. She would like to stay here, in a space where there’s still a filament of hope. Maybe Agent Kenneth Beckett, who came to search the Church Street house a few weeks earlier, has intervened on Irene’s behalf. There’s always a good FBI agent in the movies, right? One who sees past the letter of the law to what’s authentically right and wrong? Irene didn’t do anything wrong. She doesn’t deserve to lose her home.

“Lydia?” Irene says.

“It’s been seized,” Lydia says. “They have a sign on the door and a team has just arrived to remove the contents. I asked to see the warrant, and what do I know, but it looked official. The guy called the house the ‘fruit of crime.’”

Irene’s stomach lurches and she fears she’s going to vomit. Remove the contents. The “fruit of crime.”

“What about the things that are mine?” Irene asks. “What about the things I bought with my salary from the magazine? What about the things we owned before Russ took the job at Ascension?”

“I don’t know,” Lydia says. “We’re sitting across the street in my car. Should I go ask?”

Irene tries to imagine Lydia asking these complicated questions. But the agents must get asked about this sort of thing constantly, every time they dismantle someone’s life.

“Please ask if you can get one thing,” Irene says. “A photograph of Milly. It’s in the navy-blue guest suite, hanging above the washstand.”

“Photograph of Milly, navy guest room, above the washstand,” Lydia repeats. “I’ll ask right now. You stay on the phone. Here, talk to Brandon.”