She clutches me even tighter, Saxim lingering behind her, and that’s when I feel dampness on my shoulder. I put a hand on her wet, pink cheek, dab her tender skin—she’s been crying. I wonder if Brando found her first, scared her. I wonder if she found out what I know about him and Mitso, somehow. “Tai?”

Wordlessly, she draws me through the gap in the fence, then she and Saxim try to kick the fence closed once we’re all through. As if to keep someone out. She doesn’t say a word as the three of us sprint back up the hill and into the house. She locks the front door behind her, and I follow her to Dad’s sickroom, the most protected of them all. Breathless. We’re kneeling next to each other when she finally pulls something small and pink out of her bra and pushes it in my hands.

Leather, the finest leather. A crumpled ball. I straighten it and hold it up. A glove. A blush-pink glove.

“Tai?”

I look into her swollen eyes, and that’s when I know. Without breathing, I stuff it back into her hand, and close it tight. I don’t want it to touch the air and light.

“Where?”

The words spill out of her, and I can hardly keep up.

“Antella snuck us out through a service door and wrapped me in her Gucci sweater, even though I puked,” she says, lifting its purple hem. “But I insisted Saxim and I take a cab home alone. No one but you, me, and Saxim know about this.” She presses the glove back into my hand.

“And Teddy,” I whisper back.

We call the police again via Saxim’s phone, pacing back and forth as we try to explain, and we don’t notice when another car approaches the drive—nor when someone climbs up the hill. But we do hear an oversize key fiddling with the lock. We do hear the nightmarish front door, modeled on the glorious Gates of Hell, creaking open. We do hear the footsteps, heavier and more surefooted than ours, approach Dad’s room.

We know who’s coming.

When he opens the door, he finds us there, kneeling like three children, hands clasped as if in prayer. We turn to look at him. His face is calm.

“Tai,” he says. “I was really worried about you.” He puts on his same Santa Claus face—the one that brought us pure, childish joy. Kindly and warm. Impossible to resist. But I can’t help seeing it as a desperate mask now. “You just … left. With Antella Arnoix, of all people.”

“Hi,” Tai says, standing and smoothing her filth-encrusted sweater, as if he’s an old hookup she’s embarrassed to see. Mina continues to recharge behind us, beeping steadily.