The mother got out several minutes later. She walked slowly to the front door of the house, and Sherri thought about all of the tasks she must have ahead of her: dinner to prepare, the third brother to be collected from wherever he was, Betty the dog to feed and walk, all with the unanswered question of her daughter’s death hanging over her.

How could anyone bear this? How could life go on? But it had to.

For Sherri, life went on, and on, and on. Meals. Katie’s schedule, her dance classes and dentist appointments. Sex. Bobby couldn’t have known how much she dreaded the sex by that point. He probably didn’t know that after every time she scrubbed herself extra hard, until her skin turned pink and raw.

Breakfasts, and dinners, the packing of Katie’s lunch box and the dropping off and picking up of the dry cleaning. On all of these tasks Madison Miller accompanied Sherri, like a pet parrot attached firmly to her shoulder.

To the dark Web she went, again and again, every time she was alone in the house. She found photos of Madison that weren’t on the news. Pictures of her body as it had been found. Her face was swollen, unrecognizable. Sherri only looked at that picture once, and she never let herself do it again, but she also never forgot it.

The charm necklace came up in some of the posts, because Madison had been wearing it when she disappeared, and she wasn’t wearing it when she was found. Sherri saw photos of the necklace online: the ruby, the sixteen, the MRM. Her parents had given it to her for her sixteenth birthday, four months before she disappeared.

When Sherri thought of Madison’s parents choosing that necklace and watching as Madison opened the box it came in, her heart broke in a thousand little pieces.

All this time, Sherri stayed aware of what was in Bobby’s hiding place under the register. The contents changed again and again. Once when it was money Sherri took some and left it in Madison Miller’s mailbox, in a plain white envelope. Would Bobby notice? Would Madison’s parents trace it to Sherri somehow? She hadn’t thought to wear gloves. But she’d never been fingerprinted, so a record of her prints wouldn’t exist. Sherri imagined the Millers using the money to treat the three brothers to something special: a meal out, maybe, or a day at the ballpark.

Did Bobby know that every time he left the house she pulled off the grate with trembling hands, moved the floor tiles, looked to see what was different?

Sometimes there were zip drives. Often there was money in different denominations and currencies. Passports for people she didn’t recognize. And then one day there was a new box, and in that box was a charm necklace with a ruby, a number sixteen, the initials MRM.