Brady was watching us, a strange expression on his face, but when I met his eyes, he looked like his usual self again. “Success like this calls for a toast. You in?”

“Go ahead.” I felt like curling up with Grace, snuggled on my own sofa, in a safe world. Without Lena, Brady was too bulky, too boisterous, just too much.

Now in this cold police station, I would have given anything to be back in that moment with Michael’s arm around my shoulder. If I could have done it all again, I’d have said, “No, don’t go with Brady.” I’d make Michael stay home, and we’d have been safe. None of this would have happened. We’d have spent the evening together on the sofa; we’d wake together in our own bed; the world would have been right.

This community room was frigid, I was tired, and the little plastic chair was sending spasms of pain through my lower back, counteracting the weight of the hours I’d been awake and the stress dragging down my limbs. I kept trying to force my brain to work, to pick through my memory for the key that would make the police give Michael back to me.

I ran through the math again in my mind, the things I would say when they questioned me, hoping the numbers would add up to something that would save my husband. Michael had gone off with Brady at nine o’clock; I’d nursed Grace and put her down at eleven. He hadn’t been home when I heard her fussing at two in the morning. But sometime between two and three, he’d come back in, and this nightmare had begun. A little over five hours. They hadn’t been driving, there hadn’t been anyone else in the house, but something terrible had happened. Not only that, but Michael had been afraid that someone would be watching us. Was it Brady? Or had the mysterious someone killed him?

No, this whole thing was crazy. Michael could never have been involved in a murder. Never. Nobody was dead. This was just some kind of misunderstanding.

Nursing Grace in an empty room with my head bowed and my whole body arching in and over my baby like a shell, I felt like I was in the right position for praying. I fell back on the one I’d prayed as a child: Please, God, please let everything be okay. Please, let this be okay. I was praying for Michael, alone somewhere and traumatized; I was praying for myself, frustrated and helpless; I was praying for Grace, who deserved a peaceful life with parents who were in control. And I had a sense I was praying for someone unknown. Someone whose blood stained my sweatpants.