“His company didn’t need it as much as I did. The devil wanted me to have it. It wasn’t theirs to keep.”

“Mom…” What’s the point?

If he hadn’t gotten fired for losing the prototype, he would have gotten fired for something else Mom did anyway. It’s hard to be an engineer when your wife calls you every two minutes. And if he didn’t answer the call, she called the receptionist or his boss or random coworkers to find out if he was okay. And if nobody answered, then he might get a surprise visit from the police, wanting to talk to him about how his wife freaked out in public, screaming and yelling that they had gotten to her husband.

“What is that?” asks Clara.

“A prototype device for tracking pets,” I say. “It uses a tiny tracker. Waterproof and impact resistant. My dad showed it to us once. Apparently, my mom liked it a lot.”

“He was an engineer?”

“He was,” I say. I don’t tell her that by the time he finally left us, he was working night shifts at 7-Eleven, our nearest convenience store, where Mom could sit in the corner while he worked the cash register.

“My husband Brad was an engineer, too,” she says wistfully, almost to herself.

On my mom’s device, the arrow blinks and follows a path. Its target is on the move.

“What are we tracking?” I ask.

“Paige,” says Mom.

“How do you know this is Paige?” I ask, pretty sure this is another fantasy. It’s one thing to have Dad’s tracking device. It’s another to actually be tracking Paige, considering she needs to have the transmitter on her.

“The devil tells me.” She lowers her head, looking troubled. “If I promise him certain things,” she mumbles.

“Okay.” I rub my forehead, trying to be patient. There’s a certain art to getting information out of my mom. You need one foot in reality and one foot in her world to get a better picture of what she’s talking about. “How does the devil know where Paige is?”

She looks up at me as if I’d asked the dumbest question in the world.

“The transmitter, of course.”

25

SOMETIMES, even I make the mistake of underestimating my mother. It’s easy to assume that she’s not smart and cunning just because she believes in illogical things and makes poor decisions. But her condition has nothing to do with her intelligence. I forget that sometimes.

“Is the transmitter on Paige?” I hold my breath, not daring to breathe.

“Yes.”

“Where? How?” If Mom had put the transmitter in a bag or something, thinking that Paige would have it on her, then we might be following a Resistance trash truck instead of Paige.

“There.” Mom points to my shoe.