Chapter 1 - THE JACKET IN THE TRASH.
The trash bag fought me harder than I expected.
My fingers were shaking so badly I couldn't get the knot loose, so I stopped trying. I hooked both hands into the black plastic and ripped.
The sound cracked across Diane's driveway.
Coffee grounds spilled over my sweatpants. A paper plate slapped the concrete. Something wet and sour-smelling rolled beneath the trash bin.
I didn't care.
I'd been awake almost twenty-three hours.
My six-year-old son was missing.
And his grandmother had looked two police officers in the face that morning and told them he had never been at her house.
Never came over.
Never stepped inside.
Never knocked on the door.
She'd repeated it three times.
I knew because I'd been standing beside the patrol car when she said it.
Then I saw blue denim beneath the coffee grounds.
I stopped breathing.
It was small.
Child-sized.
One sleeve was twisted underneath a torn grocery bag, and the bright red edge of a Spider-Man patch showed through the mud.
I grabbed it.
The jacket came out heavy and wet.
Mud had dried along one shoulder and smeared across the front. The cuffs were filthy. One snap button was missing.
But I knew that jacket.
Of course I did.
I'd bought it six weeks earlier after standing in Target for ten minutes debating whether I could justify spending thirty-two dollars on something he was probably going to outgrow before spring.
He'd put it on right there in the aisle.
He'd stretched his arms out and said, "Do I look fast?"
I'd told him Spider-Man didn't fly.
He'd said, "I know. But I can."
That stupid little conversation hit me so hard I had to put one hand on the trash bin to stay upright.
Then I saw the inside label.
His initials.
Written in black laundry marker.
My handwriting.
I made a sound I didn't recognize.
Not a scream exactly.
Something lower.
Something torn out of me.
Diane's house sat at the end of a clean suburban cul-de-sac where the mailboxes matched and every lawn looked professionally embarrassed by the existence of weeds.
Her porch columns were white.
Her shutters were black.
Her beige SUV sat under the carport without a speck of dirt on it.
My twelve-year-old Honda was parked crooked against the curb because I'd barely remembered to put it in park.
Two houses down, a woman watering flowers stopped moving.
I didn't care about her either.
I clutched that muddy Spider-Man jacket against my chest and ran.
Up the driveway.
Across the stone path Diane once told me had cost more than my car.
Up the three wooden porch steps.
Then I hit the front door with my fist.
"Diane!"
No answer.
I hit it again.
"Diane!"
The door opened so suddenly I nearly fell forward.
She stood there in a beige cardigan, hair neat, lipstick on.
That detail made me hate her for one clean second.
Lipstick.
My child had been missing since yesterday evening, and Diane had put on lipstick.
"What are you doing?" she said.
I shoved the jacket toward her.
Her face changed.
It wasn't dramatic at first.
Her eyes dropped.
Her mouth opened slightly.
Then all the color left her face.
"Where is he?"
She didn't answer.
"WHERE IS HE?"
"I don't—"
I pushed the muddy jacket closer.
"You told the cops he never came here."
Her eyes flicked toward the street.
Not toward me.
Not toward the jacket.
Toward the neighbors.
That made something inside me turn cold.
"You lied."
"No."
"This is his."
"I know whose jacket it is."
The sentence came too quickly.
I froze.
Diane seemed to hear herself a second after I did.
I lowered my voice.
"How do you know?"
She pressed one hand against her mouth.
"Oh, God."
"How do you know it's his if he was never here?"
"I've seen him wear it."
"When?"
"Before."
"When?"
She backed one step into the doorway.
I followed.
She raised her hand.
"Don't come into my house screaming."
"My son is missing."
"I understand that."
"No, you don't."
"I've been worried sick too."
"You told the police he wasn't here."
"He wasn't."
I threw the jacket at her chest.
She caught it badly.
Mud streaked her cardigan.
For years Diane had treated stains as moral failures.
My son once dropped a spoonful of macaroni on one of her white dining chairs and she talked about it for three Thanksgiving dinners.
Now she was staring down at mud on a cardigan that probably cost more than my monthly electric bill.
She started crying.
Or trying to.
Her face folded.
Her hand covered her mouth.
Her shoulders shook.
But there were no tears.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
My entire body went still.
"For what?"
"I shouldn't have—"
"For what?"
She reached for the jacket.
I grabbed it first.
Suddenly Diane stopped performing.
Her hand shot out.
She clamped my wrist.
Hard.
The speed of it shocked me.
"Diane."
Her nails dug into my skin.
She pulled me close enough that I could smell coffee on her breath.
Her eyes looked completely different now.
No fake sadness.
No wounded grandmother.
Fear.
Real fear.
She whispered, "I had to hide his clothes."
My knees almost gave out.
"What?"
"Keep your voice down."
"Why?"
Her eyes darted toward the hallway behind her.
Then downward.
Toward the floor.
"Before the man in the basement smelled him."
For one second I honestly thought I had misunderstood her.
"What man?"
"Stop."
"What man is in your basement?"
She squeezed my wrist harder.
"You don't understand."
"Then explain it."
"Not here."
"My child was here."
She looked at the jacket.
Then at me.
And that tiny movement answered more than anything she'd said.
I screamed toward the interior of the house.
"Baby!"
Diane grabbed for my shoulder.
I shoved past her.
"My son!"
"You can't go in there!"
I ran down the hallway.
The house smelled like lemon polish and cinnamon candles.
Everything looked normal.
That was the worst part.
Family pictures.
A folded throw blanket.
The bowl where Diane kept wrapped peppermints.
The framed print she'd once told me was "an original reproduction," which I still didn't understand.
"My son!"
A floorboard creaked beneath my foot.
Then something knocked below us.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
I stopped.
Diane stopped too.
We looked at each other.
There was another knock.
Not pipes.
Not the furnace.
A fist.
From underneath the floor.
Then a man's voice came through the basement door at the end of the hall.
"Diane?"
She went white.
The voice continued.
"Who is upstairs?"
May you like
And Diane whispered one sentence that scared me more than anything else she'd said.
"Don't tell him you're his mother."
