I decide to allow myself the luxury of not deciding immediately. I want to cling to the possibility—not of going back to how it was, but of one last communication, to end things in a proper way. I know better than anyone that sometimes a possibility is enough to keep a person going, even if it never becomes a reality.

Will Gavin still be checking, three weeks and four days after he last heard from me, or will he have given up by now? If it had been the other way around and he’d suddenly stopped emailing me, how soon would I have stopped looking to see if he’d written?

The phone’s ringing as I pull up outside my house. I grab my bag, lock the car door and fumble with the front-door key, knowing the call will be about Ethan. Something’s happened: he’s sobbing, locked in a bathroom stall. Or there’s a problem with his gym bag—something’s missing. How sure am I that I put all the right things in?

Let him be OK and I swear I won’t email Gavin, or even think about it any more.

I run into the living room and grab the phone, wondering why I persist in offering God these phony deals. If He exists, He must be reasonably intelligent—maybe not academic-intellectual clever, but powerfully intuitive, and with a deep understanding of people. He must have spotted the pattern by now: I never stick to my side of the bargains I make with Him. Time and time again, He goes easy on me and I think, Phew, and forget about what I promised I’d do in return, or invent a loophole to let myself off the hook.

I pick up the phone. “Hello?”

“Is that Mrs. Clements?”

“Yes, speaking.”

“It’s Izzie here, from Freeth Lane. We just met, when you came in before?”

“Is Ethan OK?” I resent the time it takes me to ask: endless stretched-out seconds of not knowing.

“Oh.” Izzie sounds surprised. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I snap.

“I assume he’s all right. I haven’t heard that he isn’t.”

“So you’re not phoning about Ethan?”

“No.”

I exhale slowly as I fall into a chair. “Right. So what can I do for you?”

“It’s Sophie.”

Sophie, who’s never problematic in any way, who I don’t need to worry about. I take her well-being for granted. I feel as if my heart has been lobbed at the wall of my gut, feel it sliding slowly downward, flattened by dread.

The children of guilty mothers, hostages to karma, always in imaginary peril that feels so real, so asked for . . .

“She’s been sick,” says Izzie. “She seems fine now, and she says she wants to stay for the rest of the day, but it’s policy to let parents know.”