He was silent again. I’d pushed him too hard. He didn’t want my help, and now he was withdrawing just like he had before. I started to say, “I’m sorry,” but he spoke at the same time, and I couldn’t understand him.

We both stopped, and then I whispered, “Go ahead.”

“I’ll go to therapy.”

I must have misheard. “What?”

“When this is over.” He spoke quickly and quietly, his words running together. “I’ll talk to Dr. Lindsey or anyone you want. And you and I, we’ll take Grace to the zoo, and we’ll visit the River Walk, and it’ll all be okay. We’ll be okay.”

“I know, sweetheart. We will be.” He yearned for me too, and the way things used to be. I wasn’t alone; he wasn’t the cold stranger I’d been living with. My Michael was there, and he would fight for our future.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you too, so much.”

I would have stayed on the phone with him all night, holding it close and listening to him breathe, but instead we hung up with promises to talk again tomorrow.

Grace was snoring softly on the bed, her little chest vibrating like a purring cat. I wished I could believe that the world was as safe as it seemed to her. A full belly and her mama’s presence were all she needed. I caressed the top of her soft head.

If I could go back to the beginning, if Michael and I had bought a different house, if I hadn’t gone to the Bluebonnets, if I’d recognized Lena for what she was, if I’d heeded any of the warning signs—the cameras, the bitter comments, Sandy’s death—then that awful night in the nursery would never have happened. I’d feel just as content as Grace did. Instead I was tense, my shoulders unyielding knots of stress. If Lena was in Texas, maybe we were safe here, but she might be creating a fake case against Michael, stalking Elizabeth, or something worse than I could even imagine.

Around the edges of the woven bamboo blinds, I could see that the world outside was almost completely dark. I gently lifted Grace into her portable crib, sliding my hands out from under her warm back without waking her. I turned off the light and slipped out the bedroom door, ready to rejoin my parents for a quiet evening.

As I sat on the end of the futon, my mother asked, “Everything okay?”

“Just catching up with Michael.”

She nodded, clearly waiting for more information. So I said, “The FBI questioned him today, but Alondra was with him. And he’s doing okay in the safe house.”