“What will I do with Grace?” I couldn’t leave her behind, but bringing her with me would divide my attention, a part of my consciousness always hovering over her. And I needed to be fully focused for Michael’s sake, and my own.

“I think at her age she can go into the interview room with you if she stays in her carrier, or they’ll have an officer sit with her.”

My heart started to pound even harder, and I opened my mouth to protest, but Alondra held up a hand. “I’ve heard Michael’s initial statement, and before we go any further, I want you to tell me quickly and quietly exactly what happened last night.”

“I was nursing Grace.” I paused. “I mean, Brady came over.” But that wasn’t right either. “He knocked on our back door, and he and Michael worked on the garden. They showed me they’d fixed the sprinklers.” Those flashing fountains seemed a thousand lifetimes ago. “Then Michael went over to hang out with Brady, and I nursed Grace.”

“So he was only gone a few minutes?”

Grace sighed in her sleep, and I let myself watch her, taking in her round cheeks, her plump uncovered legs. Uncovered because I hadn’t grabbed so much as a blanket or a Binky as we fled. “No, this was the last feeding before I went to sleep. I got up again at two, and he wasn’t home. But while I was rocking her, he came back. He …” I wasn’t sure how to describe the urgency, the fierce pantomime. “He wouldn’t talk; he cut off the lights and took me, us, into the closet. He said—he wrote down—that we might be watched, that we had to run to the car. We couldn’t go to the garage because I’d parked in the driveway, blocking him in.” I stopped. Alondra must think I was out of my mind. Because we didn’t live this kind of life. The worst thing that had ever happened in our neighborhood was kids joyriding. Michael and I had been next door a hundred times. Maybe I was insane. This couldn’t be real. “He took the baby, and we ran through the house to the car. We drove away, and he said to come straight here.”

“Did he tell you what happened?”

I shook my head, ashamed to look at her. Alondra would never just obey a man blindly. She would have demanded answers; she would have stormed into Brady’s house and saved the day.

But then I saw a dark smear against the light-gray fabric of my sweatpants. Michael’s hands had been bloody.

My whole body flashed hot, then cold. “Please, please just let me see him.”