She saw it all play through her head like a silly dream sequence in some stupid, sappy movie. How incredibly naïve.

“The reality is I spend most of my time trying to earn a living to keep a roof over their heads, to keep clothes on their backs and shoes on their feet,” she said, the weight of that reality pressing down on her shoulders. “I feel lucky when we get to grab a meal together. Our conversations are five minutes here and ten minutes there, usually in the car on the way to some activity I won’t get to see all the way through because I’ll get a callout to a crime scene. We live our lives like hamsters running in wheels.”

She took a sip of her coffee and stared at the mug R.J. had made, her heart aching with love as she took in all the lumps and bumps and imperfections, the childish printing: TO MOM

“Sometimes I think, what if I had a different profession?” she said. “What if I had some normal kind of a job? But would it be any different? Is it really any different for anyone—for any single mom?

“So . . . what? I should find the perfect husband, right?” she said. “And when am I supposed to do that? Where am I supposed to find him? A fender bender in a parking lot? He bumps his cart into mine at the supermarket? That never happens. My life is not a Lifetime movie or a Harlequin romance. Statistically, I probably have a greater chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting remarried. I don’t even want to get remarried.

“And what are the odds the boys would like anyone I brought home, anyway?” she asked. “Pretty much zip. They’re loyal to their father—even Kyle, who thinks he hates his dad, doesn’t really hate him. He’s disappointed by him. That’s not hate. Once you cross the line to hate, disappointment is irrelevant; it’s a given. If you hate someone, you’re only too happy to have them disappoint you. It just proves your point.

“He wouldn’t bond with another man at this late date, anyway,” she went on. “He’s fifteen. He’s already looking at the light at the end of the tunnel. Three more years and he’s off to college and leading his own life. And that’s it. I had my shot, and it was over in the blink of an eye.”

She sighed, exhausted, and looked at Marysue—young and fresh-faced with her big brown eyes and her rosebud mouth. Just looking at her made Nikki feel old. She forced a wry smile.

“So you’ve got that to look forward to, Marysue,” she said. “What do you think?”

“I think you drink too much caffeine,” Marysue said without hesitation.

Their laughter broke the tension, at least for a moment.

“Well, you’ve probably got that right,” Nikki said. She took another long drink of her coffee anyway, savoring the smoky sweetness of the liqueur laced through it. “Thanks for letting me dump all that on you.”

“It’s okay,” Marysue said with a soft smile.

“I’ve got a victim,” Nikki said quietly. “A girl around Kyle’s age. We don’t know who she is. We haven’t found her family. No one has come looking for her. And I want to be outraged by that. I want to say, how can someone be missing a daughter and not even know she’s gone? Then I look at my own son. I have him right here with me, and I don’t even know who he is.”

A sense of deep, quiet desperation closed around her and squeezed. The air hissed out of her lungs, and she put her face in her hands and pressed her fingers against her closed eyes in an effort to keep the tears at bay.

Marysue Zaytoun put an arm around her shoulders.

•   •   •

KYLE HAD ESCAPED to his room at the first opportunity after supper. His mom had been relentless in trying to dig details out of him about his problems at school and his problems with Aaron Fogelman. That was one of the things that sucked about having a mom who was a police detective. She interrogated people for a living. But he was used to it. He had grown up learning how not to give anything away. Like a counterpuncher in a fight or a jiu-jitsu player rolling with a skillful opponent, his best offense was his defense.

His greatest fear was that his mother would pull the ultra-trump card and call Aaron Fogelman’s parents in an attempt to get to the bottom of things. He couldn’t think of anything worse or more embarrassing. He would rather have taken a beating by Fogelman and his goon friends every day for a month. Of course, that was exactly what would happen if his mother called Fogelman’s mother.

He could only imagine the things his enemies would say about him then, the names they would call him, the rumors they would spread.

He dug his phone out of the pocket of his hoodie and brought up his secret Twitter account.

He had a Facebook page and a Twitter account that were readily accessible on the computer in the family room. But they were basically dummy accounts. His “friends” were the pages of mixed martial arts fighters he followed and bands he liked, not kids from school.

There was no such thing as absolute privacy in this house. The rule was that he and R.J. had to share time on the computer, and Mom had access to anything and everything on it. She policed their pages regularly. R.J. was constantly getting in trouble for friending people he didn’t know and liking pages Mom disapproved of. She never said anything about Kyle’s stuff.

He had set up separate accounts on his phone using an alias. Nobody on Twitter knew @PSIArtGeek was really him. There were a million art geeks at PSI. They all followed one another automatically. The profile photo he used was the PSI mascot, an angry-looking comic owl. The stuff he tweeted was generic—mostly re-tweets of stupid memes and cartoons and art. He used the account mainly to lurk, to see what other kids were talking about. The tweets he followed were full of vicious shit from the likes of Aaron Fogelman and Christina Warner and their minions.

Beneath all the unintelligent commentary about pop culture and what everyone had for dinner, the Twitterverse was a turbulent sea of vicious accusation, unsubstantiated rumor, and outright lies. The false facelessness of it gave people the freedom to strike out in ways they might never have dared in person. Even the meek became assassins on Twitter, drunk on the counterfeit confidence of imagined anonymity.

Fogelman and his toadies were all over it tonight with their usual unimaginative cracks about Kyle being a queer, being a faggot, deserving a beat-down, and promising to give him one. Christina Warner was in the mix too, supporting her lackey’s take on what had gone down in the hall, while at the same time riding Brittany about being seen with him.

@XtinaW: Watch out @lilBritt people will think ur in luv w/psycho stalker boy! Don’t wanna b Mrs Loser

Kyle didn’t care what Christina thought about him. It was the tweet that followed hers that hurt.

@lilBritt: Not me!!! hate u stalker boy. get a boyfriend loser! LOL!

He didn’t want to believe she hated him. He didn’t believe it. She was better than that. At least, she had been BC—before Christina.

Brittany’s family had moved to Minneapolis in the spring, just as school was ending. The Brittany Kyle had met in his English class had been sweet and a little shy. He had signed up for a summer writer’s workshop—even though he sucked at writing—just to get to know her better.

They had become friends with the possibility of, the hint of, something more. At least he had thought so. They had hung out together after the workshop classes, sitting around Lake Calhoun talking about stuff—him and Britt and Gray and a couple of kids who went to other schools. They talked about poetry and art and self-expression and accepting people for who they were.