It seems impossible that either one of us could be hungry, but when I get back to the house, Eli is rummaging in the cupboard for crackers, and my stomach rumbles. The two of us haven’t yet spoken about the possibility that Ken might be what they say. We sit across from each other at the table with his empty chair between us and devour the pizza I have delivered. The small, square slices stain my fingertips with red sauce because the inner pieces don’t have any crust to hold them by. Eli has a hearty appetite and polishes off nearly half of the pizza himself.

“What’s going to happen to Dad once they find him? They will find him, won’t they?” Eli asks.

“I don’t know. I guess it depends how hard he’s trying to hide. He might have no idea anyone’s looking for him, so it might be really easy for them. They’ll arrest him, I guess. Put him on trial.”

“Will we have to get him a lawyer?”

I lean forward to look into his eyes. “I’m not getting anything for him.”

“Good.” Eli nods. His expression has gone grim and determined. “I hope he rots in prison. I hate him.”

“Eli … All of this is really hard to process. Do you need me to make an appointment for you to see someone so you can talk about it? Nobody would judge you for having a hard time,” I tell him. “You don’t have to go to school tomorrow, or for as long as you want. I’ll tell them you have the flu.”

“Okay.” He hesitates but meets my gaze. “Someone on the forum said they knew there was a named suspect.”

“I thought I told you not to look at that stuff,” I say with a sigh. “Did they name your dad?”

“No,” Eli says. “They just said that there was a break in the investigation.”

“Was there anything about what they found in the yard?”

“Not yet. But there will be. It’s only been a few hours. It’s all going to hit soon, though. The news, those forums. People are going to know it was Dad who killed all those other kids,” Eli says. “Does Christian know?”

“Honey …” Quickly, I tell him about the empty carriage house. No note, no word. No idea where he went. “He was afraid the police were here about him. He could be anywhere. You know why he’d be afraid of that, don’t you? You know what he was doing.”

“Yeah,” he says after a moment. “I know.”

“You know that you could get into major trouble if anyone connected you to what he was doing.”

“I know.”

We are both silent.

“I wanted to help you,” he says in a burst of words, breathless. “I knew you needed money, and Christian told me it would be an easy way for me to do that.”

I swallow my emotions. “He should never have gotten you involved with that, no matter what.”