Chapter 1

There's a knot in my left shoulder my husband has been working out with his thumbs every Sunday night for six years.

He never asks. He comes up behind me while I'm standing at the counter, finds it on the first try, and leans in.

His hands were still on my neck when he said it.

"Emma, who's Fletcher Kane?"

My body didn't move.

His thumbs kept going. Slow circles at the base of my skull.

Fletcher Kane.

Sloane and I made him up at nineteen, sitting on the floor of her dorm with a box of wine between us.

If either of us was ever in trouble and couldn't say it out loud, we'd find a way to say his name.

In twelve years we never used him. Not once.

Nobody else knows he exists.

But Sloane has been missing for thirty-two days.

And my husband had just asked me who Fletcher Kane was.

"MOMMY, LOOK!"

Wren came around the corner at a dead run with a sheet of construction paper over her head like a flag, and I have never in my life been so glad to see a five-year-old.

Bennett's hands left my neck. I turned around and knelt down.

"I drew a castle for Aunt Slo!" She shoved it at me. "Can we mail it to her tomorrow?"

"It's beautiful, sweetie." My voice came out fine.

"But remember what I told you? Aunt Slo is on a really long hiking trip. There's no mailbox out in the woods."

"But she PROMISED we'd make peach cobbler."

Wren hauled her unicorn up under her chin.

Sloane made that unicorn by hand for Wren's third birthday.

Crooked seams. Button eyes that don't match. A mane cut out of an old scarf.

Wren named her Cobbler and hasn't slept a night without her since.

"Cobbler misses Aunt Slo too," Wren told me.

"I bet she does, baby."

"Aunt Slo said I have to keep her safe."

I tucked her hair behind her ear. "Keep who safe, sweetie? Cobbler?"

Wren's forehead scrunched up.

"Both of them," she said, and ran off to wash her hands.

Bennett laid another slice down. "I tried to run it through the wash last week while she was at school. Figured I'd have it back on her bed before she got home."

He shook his head, smiling.

"Where'd you hear it?" I said. "That name."

"Hm? Guy at work." He didn't look up. "Stuck in my head. Weird name."

"Weird name."

"You okay? You went white."

"I'm tired."

"You're not sleeping." He set the knife down.

And when he looked at me his eyes were soft and worried and kind.

"Emma. It's been a month. I know she was your person. But I'm watching you disappear and I can't just---"

He stopped. Started again, gentler.

"I don't want you getting bad again. Not like last winter."

Down the hall, the water in the bathroom shut off.

Wren had stopped washing her hands.

Dinner took forty minutes. I don't remember any of it.

Wren talked about a boy in her class who eats glue.

Bennett laughed in all the right places.

I put food in my mouth and moved it around and swallowed it.

Thirty-four days ago Sloane left me a voicemail.

I was mid-fight with Bennett about something so small I genuinely cannot remember what it was.

I listened to four seconds of it --- Emma, call me back, something's wrong with the --- and I deleted it.

Because I was annoyed. Because I had a child to take care of.

After that, I've thought about those four seconds every day since.

By 8:30 the house was quiet and the shower was running upstairs.

Wren was already under her duvet with Cobbler jammed into the crook of her neck, one fist closed around the horn.

I'd stopped seeing it the way you stop seeing your own front door.

"Night, baby."

"Mommy?"

"Yeah?"

"Daddy asked about Aunt Slo's game today."

Everything in me stopped.

"What game, sweetie?"

"The one with Fletcher." She yawned enormously. "Daddy said don't tell you, 'cause it's a surprise for your birthday. Can I play too?"

The nightlight turned its slow circle across her ceiling. Little yellow stars, going around and around.

Bennett took it to my daughter first. Dressed it up as a game. Told her to keep it from me.

Upstairs, the shower stopped.

Wren's breathing had already gone deep and even. I pulled the blanket up over her shoulder.

Bennett's shadow came across the carpet and stopped at the foot of the bed.

"Emma? What are you two talking about?"

I turned around slowly.

"She wanted another story," I said.

Six years of marriage. That was the first time I ever looked at my husband and told him something that wasn't true.

Then he smiled. He came in and put his arm around my waist and kissed the top of my head.

"You're a good mom," he said into my hair. "Come to bed. You need to sleep."

He leaned down over our daughter and kissed her forehead, and she made a small sound and turned into it.

"Good girl."