Chương 3
I was wrong.
Ruiz returned less than twenty minutes later.
His face told me something had changed before he spoke.
“Your sister asked to use the restroom during the interview.”
I stood.
“She ran?”
“She got out through a staff corridor.”
“What about my mother?”
“She’s still here.”
“Where would Madison go?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
My phone vibrated on the table.
We both looked at it.
A text had arrived from Madison.
It contained a photograph.
A little girl sat in the back seat of a car, wrapped in Noah’s faded blue blanket with yellow stars.
Beneath the photograph were six words.
Tell the police to back off.
For several seconds, I could only stare at the photograph while the words beneath it seemed to detach from meaning.
Ruiz stepped beside me but did not touch the phone.
“Don’t answer yet.”
My thumb was already hovering over the screen.
“That’s Ava.”
“You’re sure?”
“Noah’s blanket.”
I enlarged the photograph with two fingers.
The girl’s face was turned partly toward the window, but I could see the hollow beneath one eye and a dark mark along her jaw.
Her hair looked as if someone had cut it with kitchen scissors.
She wore an oversized gray sweatshirt.
Behind her, through the car window, there was nothing distinctive enough to help me except a blurred strip of concrete and winter-brown grass.
“Can you trace it?”
“We’ll try.”
“Try?”
Ruiz lowered his voice.
“Emily, I need you to listen carefully.”
I hated the calmness in him again.
“We don’t know whether Madison sent this while driving, whether someone else is driving, whether the girl is injured, or whether Madison has access to anything that could hurt her.”
“What do I say?”
“For now, nothing.”
Another message appeared.
You have five minutes.
My hands went cold.
Ruiz lifted his own phone and called someone.
He stepped into the hallway, speaking quickly enough that I caught only pieces.
Emergency request.
Carrier.
Vehicle.
Child in immediate danger.
I looked back at Noah.
He was sleeping.
A tube ran beneath his nose.
One of his hands rested palm-up on the sheet with a purple bruise near his thumb.
I had the irrational urge to wake him and ask whether Madison owned a gun.
Then shame stopped me.
My six-year-old had already supplied more evidence than any child should ever possess.
My phone buzzed again.
Mom made me do it.
I read the sentence twice.
Then another message came.
You always think I’m the bad one.
Ruiz returned.
“Don’t engage with that part.”
“She’s trying to make this about us.”
“She’s trying to control the conversation.”
“That is about us.”
He studied me for a moment.
“Can she provoke you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you keep her talking without fighting with her?”
I nearly laughed.
Madison and I had spent thirty years failing at that exact task.
“I can try.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
He told me to ask one simple question.
Is Ava hurt?
I typed it.
The reply came almost immediately.
Not by me.
Ruiz read it over my shoulder.
“Ask where she needs medical help.”
I did.
Madison responded with three dots, then nothing.
The typing indicator vanished.
It returned.
Then vanished again.
I felt every second in my teeth.
Finally she wrote, You want to help now?
My throat tightened.
Ruiz pointed to the screen but did not tell me what to say.
For the first time, I understood why.
Anything scripted would sound wrong to Madison.
She had known my voice since before either of us had learned to lie well.
I typed, Yes.
She replied, That’s convenient.
I almost wrote something cruel.
My thumb actually formed the first word before I erased it.
Instead I wrote, Tell me what she needs.
A minute passed.
Then a location pin appeared.
Ruiz moved so fast his chair tipped backward.
The pin marked a parking lot beside a twenty-four-hour laundromat in west Dallas.
Officers were already being sent, but Ruiz told me not to assume Madison would remain there.
“Do I go?”
“No.”
“She asked me.”
“She didn’t.”
“She sent me the location.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“You think she expects police?”
“I think she expects something.”
The distinction chilled me.
Another message arrived.
Come alone.
Ruiz sighed once through his nose.
“There it is.”
I looked toward Noah.
“I can’t leave him.”
“No.”
“But Ava—”
“No.”
His tone hardened.
“Your sister just assaulted or assisted in assaulting your child, escaped police custody, and appears to have transported another endangered child.”
“She’s my sister.”
“That doesn’t make her safer.”
It was such an obvious sentence that it hurt.
I sat down.
Ruiz began coordinating with officers while I stared at the location pin.
My mother had taught us both that family was supposed to be a closed circle.
You did not embarrass family.
You did not tell outsiders what happened inside the house.
You did not make private ugliness public.
When my father drank too much at my eighth birthday party and passed out beside the garage, my mother told the neighbors he had food poisoning.
When Madison was suspended from high school for stealing another girl’s phone, my mother blamed the school for “targeting sensitive girls.”
When I admitted during my divorce that my husband and I had been unhappy for years, she called me disloyal for discussing it with a therapist.
Family meant silence.
I had mistaken silence for loyalty for most of my life.
My phone rang.
Madison.
Ruiz immediately signaled for me to answer.
He activated something on his own device and nodded.
I pressed the phone to my ear.
“Madison?”
“Are the cops there?”
Her voice was breathless.
There was traffic behind her.
“I’m at the hospital.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Yes.”
She made a disgusted sound.
“Of course.”
“Is Ava with you?”
“She’s fine.”
A girl coughed in the background.
My fingers tightened around the phone.
May you like
“That doesn’t sound fine.”
“She’s sick because Mom kept her in that place.”
