Then, like magnets, we’re together, attached, holding each other up. He touches that soft spot behind my ear with a finger, and I feel my pulse beat a rhythm, syncopated at first, then steady. It’s odd to think of love at a time like this, with our son gone and the brown sludge of coffee in the sink, but Patrick’s hands roam down from my neck, across my back, and forward to my breasts, which swell in the silk nightie, responding to his touch in that automatic way the flesh has of pricking up, even when the mind tells it not to.

“I can’t be late,” I say, pulling back from him. I also can’t lie under my husband this morning, thinking about the first time, the time we made Steven.

I’m also thinking about what Patrick would have done if, instead of Julia, it was me who Reverend Carl tore from my home and made stand in front of television cameras before shipping me off to a life of silence and servitude. Would he come after me?

Lorenzo would, but not Patrick.

“Where do you think he went?” I say, turning on the shower. “Steven, I mean.” Julia might be anywhere—up the coast, inland, across the country in a California orange grove. “Finding her would be like finding a black cat in a coal cellar.”

Patrick shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Let me show you something.” He leaves me in the bathroom and goes to the nightstand on his side of the bed. “What the hell?”

The lie’s already prepared, and easier to recite when I’m not looking him in the eyes. “Damn handle came off last night. Don’t you remember?”

There’s a pause while he thinks this over. Finally, I hear the jangle of keys and a single, perplexed “Huh” from the bedroom before I escape into the shower.

“I’ll make you some tea if you want,” Patrick calls. “When you’re done, come to my office. I think I know where Steven’s headed.”

I take the quickest shower of my life, comb out unwashed hair, and dress in loose jeans and a linen shirt that I don’t have to tuck in. Screw the dress code; I’m hot, rushed, and pregnant. Then I go down the hall into Patrick’s study.

Reverend Carl’s face fills the screen, and his hands are held up as if in prayer. It’s his preferred speaking pose. The news camera trained on him tracks back, opening up the shot to reveal the rest of the stage. Julia King is unrecognizable.

They’ve shaved her, of course—I expected that. I didn’t expect the job to be so half-assed, like an amateur sheepshearing by a blind man with palsy. Clumps of remaining hair stick in rusty patches on her head.