Steve had made clear there was no reason to suspect it was some random thing, a killer on the loose. There were no reports of missing pregnant women in the area, which meant the baby’s mother must—Barbara’s words, not his—be responsible. And in a place like Ridgedale, with all that money and all those endless options? Disgusting, really. Never mind that there was one surefire way to make sure you didn’t have a baby you couldn’t care for: Don’t have sex. Or, for heaven’s sake, why not use birth control?

Barbara thought of Hannah and Cole. How light they’d been as newborns. How breakable. The thought of a little baby like that out there alone, crying and crying until it could cry no more. Worse yet, what if someone had stopped her from crying on purpose? The thought made Barbara positively nauseated.

“Was she born alive?” Barbara had asked. “I mean, she wasn’t killed, was she?”

“We don’t know yet,” Steve had said, his voice rough.

“You mean it’s possible someone could have—”

“I sure hope not,” Steve said. “But with the condition of the body—let’s just say I think the medical examiner will have his work cut out for him.”

He was sparing her the most gruesome details. Ironic, given that, between the two of them, Steve was the far more sensitive.

“What do you mean, the condition of the body?” she asked.

“I don’t think—”

“Steve, please. I need to know.”

He was quiet for a minute. “The water and the cold, I guess they complicate things. Looks like the baby started out buried, and then the creek gave way in the rain. There’s a lot of damage to the body. Some of the bruising and lacerations look postmortem, that’s the one bit the ME could say for sure. But the broken bones and the fractured skull could be the cause of death. On that, the ME wouldn’t make a guess yet. Made clear he might never know. Sounds like that’s the way it can be with real little babies.”

Barbara winced. Newborn heads were so very soft. How many times had she feared crushing her own children’s heads, slipping down the stairs as she held them, and now someone could have done that on purpose?

There was a loud round of giggles at the back of the room. Barbara wiped her eyes, fully teary when she smiled up at the children. So precious. So little. So fleeting. They were kindergartners, but soon they’d have lengthened, lost their babylike lisps. They’d be full-fledged children with opinions and well-formed arguments, and they’d spend more time rushing away than snuggling close.

Barbara had already been through that with Hannah. It had been bittersweet, but healthy in its way. Especially for Hannah, who’d always needed to be a little more independent. Barbara still missed her daughter being a little girl, of course, would have kept her that way forever if she could have. Seventeen already, with friends Barbara didn’t love and fashion choices she would never understand—did Hannah really have to dress every day in yet another sweatshirt? She’d even be driving soon. But such was the nature of motherhood, holding them tight in order to let them go.

At least Barbara had time left with Cole, a good deal because of the gap between the children. After that early miscarriage before Hannah and then the years of trying to conceive again after she was born, Barbara had resigned herself to the reality that she would never have another baby. But then there she was, pregnant again. It had been something of a shock to have a newborn and a twelve-year-old, but Cole was always so easy. Food, sleep, cuddling, and he was the picture of contentment. So much easier than Hannah had ever been with all her “sensitivities”—the temperature, the tags in her T-shirts, the slightest change in Barbara’s tone of voice. With Hannah, Barbara could never do anything right.

Barbara spotted Cole at the far back of the group in his dark gray caterpillar-body sweatsuit, a hand cupped near his mouth, whispering to his friend Will. Whatever he said made Will giggle. It was nice, the boys’ friendship. And Will was very sweet. High-energy but very, very sweet. He wouldn’t necessarily be the boy Barbara would have chosen to be Cole’s friend, but that was more because of Will’s mother.

Barbara didn’t even dislike Stella, she just found her so confusing. It wasn’t simply that the two of them were different either. Despite what some people seemed to think, Barbara didn’t pick her friends based on whether they made the same life choices. She did tend to steer clear of women with “big” careers. But that was because they so often made her feel as though talking about her children meant she was a less worthwhile (and significantly more stupid) human being.

The worst part about Stella—who had said she used to be a stockbroker so many times that Barbara sometimes wondered if she had Tourette’s and waved her divorce around like a bra on fire—wasn’t her swollen résumé, it was her unpredictability. Stella could be blatantly inattentive in certain ways, wildly overprotective in others. It turned scheduling a simple playdate into a minefield. The latest was Stella’s claim that Will didn’t like going to other people’s houses, that it made him nervous. It was obviously a lie. Will was the least nervous child Barbara had ever encountered.

Barbara had always gone into every conversation with Stella hoping they would find common ground, only to walk away feeling as though she’d stepped on Stella’s toes again. It was silly, really. The fact that Stella and Barbara would never be friends—and there was no question about that—hardly seemed reason for them not to be friendly. These days, Barbara would have settled for civil.

When the children had gotten their coats on, Barbara watched them shuffle single-file toward the door. She wiggled her fingers in Cole’s direction, but he didn’t see her as he headed toward the steps to the side yard. Barbara drifted to the windows to watch them spill outside. Most of the children ran for the playground equipment, a few clinging to the edge of the building as if they’d been turned loose in an unfriendly prison yard. Cole moved fast, sprinting alone for the back fence. He didn’t stop until he’d reached it, linking his fingers through the wires as he stared across the empty, muddy fields that stretched behind the school. Watching him made Barbara’s heart ache.

She felt such love for both her children, but Cole was much more like Barbara: simple, straightforward. Her love for him was, too. Hannah was like Steve, a big bleeding heart. Between Hannah’s tutoring and Steve’s police work, it was as if they were trying to save the world one needy stranger at a time. Deep down, Barbara knew that their compassion was their strength. But in her experience, all that caring for strangers came at a cost. The only question was who would pay.

There were benefits to Hannah’s sensitivity though. She never wanted to disappoint. So she didn’t drink or do drugs or anything like that, and there were no tattooed older boys sniffing around. There were no boys at all to speak of yet. Barbara had made clear that girls who ran around having sex in high school had no self-respect. And Hannah, being Hannah, had listened without Barbara ever having to repeat herself.

Barbara squinted in the direction of Cole, still staring across the field. What on earth was he looking at?

“Oh, Barbara,” Rhea said, startling her from behind. “I’m so glad you’re here. I was going to call you later today.”

“Call me?” Barbara asked, feeling caught off guard. “Why?”

Rhea smiled and motioned toward two small chairs. “I was hoping we could match notes about Cole.”

“Cole?” Barbara pulled in some air through her nose, hoping it might slow her heart. Silly that it was already beating so hard when she didn’t know what was wrong. “He isn’t being picked on, is he? I’ve been worried about that ever since the class picnic. He doesn’t always hold his own around some of the higher-energy boys.” Barbara didn’t say Will’s name. She didn’t want to go that far, but that was whom she was thinking about. Inevitably, boys like Will had a dark side.