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Dix wanted to slap her, to back up to the start of his day before she came up his drive. He wanted everything to be her fault so he had someone to punish. He wanted to bang his head on the table and smash his fist into the wall. Lucky lifted her head from her paws, looked at him with concern, and slunk out of the room. Dix turned his face to the window. There were robins on the lawn, probing for worms. Miranda used to love to watch the robins. He decided he would waste no energy on fruitless displays of rage. He would save that for dealing with Darius.

Dix turned his attention back to the woman sitting rigidly at his table. “Why are you here?” he asked her. “You didn’t come here to tell me how Miranda died. You came here to tell me something else. What is it?”

Sally rolled her shoulders and straightened her back in her chair. “I came to tell you about the baby,” she said.

“What baby?” Dix asked, stalling on this new, unexpected topic as confusion and alarm swirled in his mind.

“Miranda’s baby,” Sally said.

Dix stared at her. As if he didn’t know, as if there could be any other baby.

“I thought the baby died with her,” Sally explained. “I thought the baby may have even caused her death. Both their deaths.”

“Right,” Dix said. “That’s what Darius told me.” Wasn’t it? He remembered clearly the look on Darius’s face, the sad, slow shaking of his head when Dix had asked about the baby. He couldn’t remember all the details of what Darius had said. But he could remember the feelings. Feelings he didn’t want to recall.

“The baby didn’t die,” Sally said. “They have her. They’re hiding her. They’re hiding Miranda’s baby so they can raise her according to all his whacked-out principles.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Dix asked, frustrated, growing angry that this woman was dragging out all these things he’d packed up, put away, gotten over. She was making a mess of all the emotions he’d so carefully organized. “What does Darius and Miranda’s baby have to do with me? Why does Darius have to hide his own baby?”

Sally stared at Dix. “Darius and Miranda?” she asked, confused. “Darius’s baby?”

Dix returned her look, challenging her to explain.

“You thought . . .” Sally couldn’t complete her sentence. She dropped her head to her chest. “Dix. The baby. Not Darius’s,” she stammered. She lifted her face and met his eyes. “It’s
your
baby, Dix. Yours. That’s why I’m here.”

My baby? My daughter?

Sally shook her head in dismay.

Dix remembered Miranda similarly shaking her head at him. As Darius had done when he’d asked about the baby. They’d deliberately misled him. Deceived him. He could not fathom that degree of falsehood. The heat of betrayal filled his body. He began to tremble. He wanted to vomit.

Miranda had become pregnant by him. Not Darius. Flashes of her, of the two of them in bed together, cluttered his head. The feel of her hair. The smell of her skin. The release of his climax within her. He’d made her pregnant. He had a baby. Alive. His baby. Out there. Without him. He dropped his face to his hands. Then he looked directly at Sally.

“That bitch,” he said. “She stole my baby.”

“Do you want to go get a cup of coffee?”

They were standing outside the back door to Warren’s office. The three of them had just spent two hours together, sharing information and coordinating plans.

“Probably a bad idea.” Dix answered his own question before Sally did. “Can’t be seen together.”

“Right,” Sally said.

“You going to be OK going back out there?”

Sally shrugged. “Just like Warren said. We have to keep things as normal as possible until we can get a warrant and social services all lined up.”

Dix stared off into a tree, where a squirrel was scolding them. “You sure they’ll tell you in advance when they’re coming in so you can get out of there?”

“Believe me, the last place I want to be when the state shows up with a warrant and a baby seat is anywhere near Darius. Let them deliver the eviction notice. Let them fill up their banker’s boxes with evidence. I’ll make sure they tell me when it’s going to happen and when it’s done.”

It was a hot day, even in the shaded parking lot. Dix lifted his ball cap and wiped his brow with his forearm.

“Don’t worry, Dix,” Sally said. “It’ll be OK. They’ll move fast because of the baby. They’ll get her safe and into foster care quickly. Then it’s just a DNA test, home visit, paperwork, and she’ll be with you.”

Dix wanted to cry. Dix never wanted to cry. But he had grown unaccustomed to kindness. He was unused to receiving help. He had never needed it before. He was also scared about becoming a father. And just as scared he’d never have the chance.

Sally crossed her arms over her chest. “I do wish I could be there to see his face when they arrive, though,” she said. “Wipe that smug grin off his pretty little mouth.”

“Yup,” Dix said. “And to watch him realize we are the ones who snuffed out his little world.”

She nodded. “Too dangerous, though,” she said. “It’s bad enough he’ll know it was me. I’m going to be watching my back for a long time after this.”

Dix expelled a breath. He shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“What?” she asked.

“I have an idea,” he said.

Sally’s colleagues told her when they were going in. The night before it was to happen, she got back to The Source in the diffuse dark of a summer night. She ran into no one as she ascended the steps to her room. She heard footfalls above. Darius was in the attic. The lights were still on in the trailer. She stood at her window and watched as two of the women returned to the farmhouse.

For the last time,
Sally thought as the lights went out across the yard.
This is the last night you will spend in my house.

Dix wanted Sally at his place two hours before dawn. She was afraid to go to bed, afraid to sleep. As if staying awake, on guard, could guarantee success. She listened to the floorboards creak as Darius dropped his weight onto the thin mattress overhead. A toilet flushed and a door closed across the hall. Silence descended. Sally stood by the window, watching the sky darken, waiting for everyone to fall into a deep sleep, then tiptoed around her room, packing a bag with a few essentials, a couple of changes of clothes. She hadn’t made any preparations for what was about to happen. She hadn’t wanted anyone to discover she was making plans of any kind. She’d stay in a motel for a few weeks, or however long it took to evict them. However long it took her to recover some equilibrium. Then she could come back. Then she’d figure out the next step.

Her bag packed, there was nothing to do but wait. She pulled up a chair and watched the moon rise, the stars prick the black curtain of sky. Hours passed. She’d never sat this still for this long. Her mind emptied. There was nothing for her to do. This was a new feeling. She checked her watch. Soon it would be time to go, to slink down the stairs to her truck and drive away. After this morning was over, nothing would be the same again.

A muffled cry spilled into the dark. Sally listened as it was hushed.

Don’t worry, little baby,
she thought, making the words a singsong in her head.
Don’t you worry. Soon, this will all be over. Soon, your real life will begin.

Mine, too,
it occurred to her.
Mine, too.

An hour later, she was making her way up Dix’s driveway. He met her with a steaming mug of coffee, which she gulped gratefully.

“I’m not exactly an outdoorsy person,” she said. “More a Stewart’s doughnuts-and-pizza type. Just so you know.”

Dix smiled and said nothing. Their breath sent vapor up between them in the cool predawn air. She handed him the mug when it was empty. He took it indoors and came back with a small pack. He patted the side, indicating a slender metal thermos.

“There’s plenty more coffee in here.”

He handed her a headlamp and then helped her stretch it over the ball cap on her head and switched it on for her.

“Ready?”

She nodded. “Just remember that my legs are, like, half as long as yours, and I’m completely out of shape. Just quit smoking. Sort of.”

They broke into the woods at a spot where Sally would never have even noticed a trail. She kept her head bent so the headlamp illuminated the small track that wound through the dense trees. She lifted her face from time to time and was reassured by Dix’s broad back only a few steps in front of her. They trudged on in silence. In the dark, Sally had no sense of time. Her thoughts were hazed with sleep deprivation and anticipation. Her feet moved forward in mindless repetition broken only by the occasional stumble over a clod of dirt or a downed sapling. Dampness seeped into her shoes and through her socks. Movement kept her toes from getting chilled. Eventually, her lungs began to burn with exertion.

I’ve got to quit smoking for real,
she thought.
I’ve got to eat better. I need to start taking care of myself. Today is a fresh start. Today, everything changes.

She was too stubborn to stop or ask for a rest. But her body was about to give up on her. She heard birdsong. Silhouettes of individual trees crept out of the dawn. Small breaks of sky overhead were just becoming visible through the canopy. Her legs were heavy, her muscles spent. She slogged forward and bumped into something. Dix. He’d stopped in the track.

“Sorry.”

He was looking upward. “Tired?” he asked, peering down at her.

“Didn’t sleep well last night,” she said.

“Me neither.”

“At all, honestly.”

“Me neither.” Dix removed her headlamp and then his own, stuffed them into the backpack. “We’re here.”

Sally looked in the direction of his gaze and saw an enormous tree with a smooth gray trunk and stout, horizontal limbs. It reminded her of an elephant. The ground around it was littered with bristled nut casings. Dix motioned her forward, interlaced his long fingers into a stirrup, and held it out for her to step into.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she said.

“C’mon,” he said. “Up we go. Don’t want to miss the show.”

Dix helped her climb from one limb to the other, alternately supporting her from below or lending her a hand from above, until they were settled on a branch high enough up that Sally dared not look down. Dix took a wide piece of webbing from his pack, wrapped it around her waist and the tree trunk, and then ratcheted it snugly closed. Supported in this way, Sally began to relax. Dix then draped a pair of binoculars around her neck, put a granola bar in her pocket, and handed her a cup of coffee from the thermos. His movements were so fluid and understated, it took Sally some moments to register how well he was caring for her. Only he wasn’t, really. He was just doing what needed to be done. Just being Dix. Even knowing him as little as she did, she could see that.

Through the dissipating mists, the increasing light, and a gap in the layers of tree branches, Sally could see the lopsided roofline, sagging porch, scrappy yard, and, farther in the distance, a corner of the trailer at The Source. The whole place looked uninhabited. Long uninhabited. It was hard to believe she had left there only a few hours ago.

Dix shifted on his branch and Sally gestured at him with the thermos. He shook his head and brought his binoculars to his face. They didn’t talk. They just stared and waited. Sally felt light-headed. Her hands trembled slightly. No sleep, no breakfast, this absurd errand, and this crazy perch. But still, she was glad she was here. She wanted to see this. She took a few bites from the granola bar. Another gulp of coffee. Then Dix leaned forward and Sally looked in the direction his binoculars were pointed. Red and blue lights were coming toward them, up the driveway. Sally reached for her binoculars and, in the process, dropped both the coffee and the bar. She didn’t look after them, just listened to the metal cup ping off a few branches, echoing in the morning stillness.

By the time she got her binoculars focused, there were three cars blocking the drive: a beige late-model, state-issued sedan, which she knew was driven by a social worker; a black unmarked police car; and a police cruiser with its lights spinning in the early-morning air. She figured there was another cruiser positioned down by the road. Doors slammed in quick succession as the cars emptied. She watched two officers, one plainclothes and the other uniformed, step up to the farmhouse. The cop rapped his knuckles on the door, but the sound didn’t carry to her perch. Another cop and the social worker went to the trailer and did the same. The farmhouse door opened. The trailer’s did not. The cop took Darius by the arm and cuffed his hands behind his back before walking him to the cruiser and pushing him into the backseat. Then they pushed their way into the trailer, and the social worker emerged a few minutes later with a blanketed bundle over her shoulder. The cop and beige car drove away. The two men left went into the farmhouse. They’d be in there awhile, Sally knew. Looking around. Collecting evidence. Telling the women to leave. The scene returned to empty silence.