“A boy from church.”

I repeat the question, even though, with gruesome certainty, I know the answer. “Who?”

“You wouldn’t know him. Angel Gomez. He’s not even in kindergarten yet. He was playing outside his house with his brother. His brother went inside for a glass of water, and when he came out, Angel was gone. The whole town is joining together to look for him.”

I leap to my feet as well as I can, my expanding belly throwing off my balance.

That’s Angel, Miss Colivan is saying. A boy shouldn’t be that pretty. He’ll get snatched right up.

“You shouldn’t go,” Deck says, his hands on my shoulders to hold me back.

“I’m going,” I say, quivering. “I want to help.”

As I grab my cardigan, I realize what the second emotion on Deck’s face was: naked anticipation.

CHAPTER 45

Hundreds turn out to search the woods behind the Gomez house. I’m grouped with the Mill Street regulars. They have guns. I don’t know why.

I can’t shake the sensation that I’m part of an elaborate stage production.

The Fathers are leading the search. Ronald is barking orders. We’re all given a section to scour, holding hands so there’s no possibility a child could slip through. The foliage is thick, the jungle undergrowth making it difficult to forge through some areas. I struggle to keep my balance, my lower center of gravity throwing me off.

There is a thrum of excitement flowing through the Mill Street Fathers and Mothers—I don’t know how else to explain it. They’re out looking for this missing boy, which is the right thing to do.

But their mood feels oddly celebratory.

Me, I can’t shake the feeling that Angel could be my own child. Lost. Alone and crying for his mother. Mildred is holding my hand on one side, Dorothy on the other, as we’ve been instructed to do. Their embrace feels sticky. I don’t want them touching me but can’t think of how to say that, how to live with releasing their hands and possibly walking past Angel without knowing it.

“I am sure he’s back here somewhere,” Mildred says, smiling encouragingly at me. She seems the most animated of them all, almost competitive in her desire to locate the boy. “Or maybe he’s already home.”

“That’s such a kind thing to say,” Dorothy says. “If we don’t find the unfortunate child, it won’t be for lack of trying.”

A root grabs my foot and brings me to my knees.

Dorothy kneels to help me up. “However this goes, at least we’ll have your baby,” she says quietly, too quiet for the nearby searchers to hear.

Over my dead body, I think, brushing myself off as I stand without her help.

CHAPTER 46

Come Monday, Angel still hasn’t been found.

I cannot be the only person in town who didn’t sleep last night. Out there somewhere, a child is alone and missing his mother. He could be hurt. He could be imprisoned by the worst sort of evil.

Before Deck left for work, he tried to calm me down. Said the police were the only hope.

The same police—at least one of them, Amory Bauer—who let Paulie Aandeg disappear.

That isn’t good enough for me.

Because of yesterday’s search, I know exactly where Angel’s home is, on the south edge of town, the poor part. Deck has the car. The walk takes me an hour.

The house appears empty when I approach, but Angel’s mother pulls the door open before I knock. I learned from Barbara that her name is Mariela, and she’s unmarried. She’s aged a decade since I last saw her, her skin faded gray, her eyes muggy. She is heartbreak come to life.

“Any news?” she demands.

I don’t know if she recognizes me from church, or the search, or will simply ask this of anyone who shows up at her door for the rest of her life.

“I’m sorry. No. Can I come in?”

She hesitates but steps aside.

The interior of her house is small and tidy. She’s burning a Virgin Mary candle below a picture of Jesus on the cross. The table beneath the candle is strewn with plastic beads and dried roses. She leads me to the dining room table and indicates I should take a chair.

I pull out my notepad. “Do you mind if I take notes?”

“What for?” She hasn’t sat down.

“I’m a reporter for the Lilydale Gazette. I’m hoping I can write a story on Angel’s disappearance, bring some attention to it.”

“You’re one of them.”

“Excuse me?”

She shifts to stare out the back window, toward the woods I searched with a hundred other people yesterday afternoon. “You’re one of the Mothers.”

I can hear her capitalization of the word. “I am a mother.” I point to my protruding belly. “I have not joined the Mothers.”

“Still.” She’s still looking away from me. “You’re one of them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t ask for this. I paid the price, the Lilydale price. That should have been enough.”

My blood turns to sand. “The Lilydale price?”

She’s still facing outside. “I think you should go.”

“I can help.”

“They will take your child, too,” she says, turning finally. Her face is shadowed. “If they want.”

Her words lash me. “Who?”

She steps toward the door and opens it. “I’m sorry. I should not have let you in.”

I stand. I notice two wide-eyed children watching us from the kitchen. They are still. Scared. I don’t want to make this worse.

I pause at the doorway. “Can you tell me if Angel has a scar like this?” I lift my sleeve. She studies the figure eight but doesn’t so much as blink.

“No. He doesn’t.”

She closes the door gently in my face.

“Benjamin?”

“Who is this?”

My stomach twists with anxiety. I’m wagering so much on this call. I called the Star and was patched through to the photography department, just like before. “It’s me again. Joan Harken.”

“Joan! We must have a bad connection. I can hardly hear you. Can you switch to another line?”

I can’t tell him that I’m at a phone booth because I’m too scared to call from my own house. “I’ll just talk louder. I need another favor. Some more research.”

He pauses. For a horrible second, I think he’s going to turn me down. Finally: “What is it?”

“Do you have pen and paper?”

I hear a rustling on the other end.

“Got it.”

“A second child has gone missing from Lilydale. A boy named Angel Gomez.”

A whoosh of breath. “Oh, damn. Those are the worst stories. I’m sorry, Joan.”

“Yeah, me too. Lilydale isn’t such a paradise now, is it?” I can’t tell him I think they’re connected, that I think I know what the “Lilydale price” is, the cost of staying in this protected bubble where no one goes hungry, all have medical care, there are no homeless: it’s not speaking up when the men of Mill Street come for you, or later, when they decide to dispose of the evidence of their attack.