very sorry, ma’am, but I have to ask. What time did you arrive home last night?”
Maybe it’s the lack of sleep or the shock or the terror, but my brain can’t process his question. “What?”
“Last night.” His gaze wanders over my shoulder to peer down the dark hall. “What time did you get home, and is there anyone who can verify your whereabouts?”
My throat funnels shut, because that’s when it occurs to me: he’s asking me for an alibi. My child is lost in a forest hours from here, and this man has been sent to accuse me of taking him.
“I was at work until almost nine,” I say through gritted teeth. “After that I came straight home. I haven’t left since. You can check with the alarm company if you don’t believe me. I’m sure they have a record of when I turned it off and back on.”
And then I realize something else, something that buzzes under my skin like an electric current. “Oh my God. Do you think someone took him?”
“Not necessarily, but when we couldn’t reach you... Like I said, I had to ask.” His tone is almost apologetic, but there’s a relaxed alertness to him that tightens my gut. “The sheriff would like you up in Dahlonega as soon as possible. Do you know where you’re going, or do you need me to write down the address for you?”
I spin on my heel and sprint down the hallway, the robe flapping at my ankles. In the kitchen, I fumble in the junk on the counter for my phone, wake it up to find twenty-seven missed calls. Twenty-seven.
A good mother would have slept with her cell phone next to her bed while her son was away. She wouldn’t have been oblivious the very moment he vanished into the night. She would have known.
“Do you have someone you can call? A friend or family member who can give you a ride?” The cop looms in my kitchen, his gaze taking in the shadowy debris of a working mom and a messy eight-year-old. A sink overflowing with dirty mugs and crumb-strewn plates, a mini mountain of school notes and papers and mail, the pair of cereal bowls on the table, crudded with the remains of our breakfasts.
I shake my head, then nod, then shake my head again. I am an only child, an orphan, and the people I have left to call are not even remotely local. High school friends from back home, a tiny town at the top end of Tennessee. Lucas, my brother in every way but blood. Izzy—the only Atlanta friend I kept from my life Before Divorce—sailing the British Virgin Islands with her latest lover, Tristan or Tanner or some other pompous T-name. The only one left is Andrew.
Not going to happen.
I drop my cell onto the counter with a clatter and bolt to the back door. The key hook next to the alarm pad is empty. I swipe a hand across it just to be sure. No keys. I flip on the lights and search the floor, kicking away Ethan’s schoolbags, the jacket he can never remember to hang up, a pair of fuzzy pink slippers. Not there, either.
Where are they?
Another wave of panic rolls in, flickering under my scalp like a swarm of angry mosquitoes. I need to be in Dahlonega. I need to be out there in the woods, screaming Ethan’s name until my throat is raw. I need to help them find my son. No—I need to somehow figure out a way to travel back in time to yesterday morning, so I could floor the gas and whiz right past the turnoff for school and none of this would have ever happened. Ethan would be safe and snoring upstairs in his bed. I would be on the other side of the wall, lurching from my mattress with a gasp, tangled in sweaty sheets, limp with relief that it was only an awful, terrifying nightmare.
I whirl around, knocking into the cop’s massive body, solid as a brick wall. He edges back to let me pass, saying something that hits my frenzied thoughts like elevator Muzak—background noise where not a single note registers.
I need to find my keys. Think, dammit.
Back in the kitchen, I fumble through my purse, flinging the contents on the counter. My wallet, a ridiculous amount of crumpled-up receipts, a handful of mints, but no keys.
The cop is still talking, something about slowing down, sitting down, calming down, and I can’t think with him here. I shove my hands in my hair and squeeze my eyes closed, trying to block out his voice, trying to remember where I left the damn things. I came in last night, dropped my purse and phone on the counter, poured a glass of wine and—I shove past the cop and yank on the refrigerator handle and hallelujah, the jumble of silver metal, glinting under a golden Whirlpool light.
I grab for my keys, but I’m not fast enough. A long arm reaches around me, a giant fist closing around them before mine can get there.
I slam the door and pivot around, and suddenly it’s all too much. The fear, the shock, the worry, combined with my exhaustion and the key-snatching cop, the fact that there’s nobody here but me. The tears come in a well of frustration and helplessness and maybe a tiny bit of self-pity.
The cop’s shoulders soften, and he drops my keys into his pants pocket. “Go get dressed. Make sure whatever you put on is comfortable, and wear sneakers. Pack an overnight bag with the basics—change of clothes, your toothbrush, any toiletries you need. Pack one for Ethan, too, and toss in any toys or stuffed animals he might want for when we find him.” He plucks my cell phone off the counter, waves it in the air by his ear. “Where’s the charger for this thing?”
I’m too shocked to answer with anything but, “Upstairs, I think.”
“Pack it, too. We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”
3 hours, 23 minutes missing
My east-Atlanta neighborhood, a ramshackle development on the wrong end of Tucker, is the kind of neighborhood that’s used to seeing cop cars roll by in the middle of the night. The people who live on my street are rough—chain-smoking women waving their fists at strangers from the stoop, potbellied men with gold teeth and sleeves of faded tattoos, teens with saggy pants lounging on the curbs with kids too young to be smoking. The houses aren’t much better—run-down and raggedy, with drooping gutters, peeling and patchy paint jobs, overgrown yards choked by weeds. I watch them pass by on the other side of the cop’s rain-soaked passenger-side window, taking in their sad state under the dingy glow of the streetlamps and the occasional front porch light. I thought marrying Andrew would save me from a neighborhood like this one, yet thanks to the countless sneaky smoke screens Andrew erected to hide his company’s money and assets, here I am all over again.
“How you holding up?” the cop asks, and I startle. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”
“How come you’re not in uniform?” The question comes out unsteady and without rhythm. I am surprised I am able to speak at all; my throat is desert-dry, and my tongue feels like a deadweight, swollen to twice its size.
“Because I’m not a patrol officer. I’m a detective working the night shift.”
“Isn’t this a little above your pay grade?”
“What, a missing child?”
“No. Carting me all the way to Dahlonega. What is it, fifty miles?”
Without taking his eyes from the road, he says, “More like sixty-five.”
The number makes me more than
