I was going to send Justin a text, thanking him for the note, when I checked the time: past two thirty, barely enough time to pick up Ella. I also had an unread text from Stella, sent a half hour earlier. You were right, it read. Police are holding Rose for questioning! Call me ASAP!

Tuesdays were always a light day at school pickup because many of the students went on to an after-school swimming program. Barbara and Stella weren’t there, only a dozen or so parents whom I knew by sight but not by name. Waiting in the hallway for Rhea to finish the afternoon meeting, I glimpsed Ella through the little window in the door. She was sitting in the circle with her hand raised, still dressed in her bright green outfit, eyes eager and wide. Whatever Ella said when she was finally called on made Rhea clap her hands and laugh loudly, which sent Ella into a fit of giggles.

She was a happy little girl. Justin was right. However much I had failed her in my darkest moments, I must have done something right.

“Mommy!” Ella shouted when Rhea opened the classroom door.

I crouched down as she ran at me full speed, jumping hard into my open arms. I buried my face in her mass of loopy curls and squeezed. She smelled like blueberry shampoo.

“Hi, sweetheart,” I said. “How was the show?”

“It was great, Mommy!” I waited a beat for the but—but you weren’t here, but I missed you, but I was sad. Instead she just squeezed me back, so hard it was difficult to breathe. “I’m so glad to see you!”

“Me, too, Peanut.” I took a deep breath. Already I felt so much better, the thoughts that had been weighing on me—the baby, Rose, Stella, my other baby—already floating up and away as if someone had pushed open a vent. “How about you and I go to Scoops and get some ice cream?”

It was past four by the time Ella and I arrived at Ridgedale’s picture-perfect ice cream shop, which sat on a sunny, tree-lined stretch facing Franklin Street and the university. Scoops had homemade flavors like Cocoa Conniption and Strawberry Slalom, and kids could churn their own ice cream on Saturdays using the shop’s famed bicycle ice cream maker. It was the kind of magical place I couldn’t have imagined as a child.

“What do you want, Ella?” I would have bought her everything in that store if she’d promised to keep on smiling.

“Vanilla!” Ella shouted like she’d never heard of a more thrilling flavor in her entire life. “In a cone!”

“Just vanilla?” I laughed. “Are you sure? No sprinkles, nothing?”

“Nope,” she said, rocking back on her heels as she gripped the edge of the counter. “Vanilla is the best!”

As the sweet-faced teenage girl behind the counter set to work digging out the ice cream, I put my hand on Ella’s head, marveling at how perfectly it still fit in my palm. Through the etched front window, the late-afternoon sun lit up the university gold. The moment was so beautiful and perfect—Ella and the ice cream and the sun. But it didn’t feel like it belonged to me, not in any permanent sense. Happy was my adopted country, not my native land. I was still bracing to be expelled without warning.

I was about to turn from the window when I saw Steve Carlson walking quickly in the direction of the station. He nodded to someone going the other way, but it wasn’t until they’d exchanged brisk pleasantries that I realized the other man was Thomas Price. Neither seemed to want a real chat, understandable under the circumstances. Depending on how things progressed, they could easily be forced to turn against each other.

“Here you go,” said the girl behind the counter, handing a wide-eyed Ella her cone and winking at her. “I’m with you, vanilla is the best.”

We found our way to a bench in front of the shop, where Ella took a huge bite of ice cream with her teeth, which made me shiver. As we snuggled against each other, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. A voicemail, not a text. And from a number that I didn’t recognize.

I tapped on the message and put the phone to my ear, twisting my fingers through Ella’s curls as she pumped her legs back and forth under the bench like she was reaching for extra height on a swing.

“Molly Sanderson, this is Officer Deckler,” the message began. “Just checking to be sure you got everything you needed on campus today.” Deckler paused, breathed loudly into the phone. My stomach tightened. How did he even have my number? Had he looked it up in Justin’s file? “If you, you know, have other questions, you can, um, call me. This is my cell. Okay, bye.”

The second part of the message had been rushed and nervous, like he’d realized halfway through that he shouldn’t have called. And he was right. Deckler was hovering like someone with something to hide.

“Mommy?” Ella asked as I slipped the phone back in my pocket. She paused to take another lick.

“What, sweetheart?”

“What’s a slut?”

I coughed, choking on my own saliva. “My God, Ella, where did you hear that word?”

“From Will,” she said with a shrug as she took another bite. Like where she’d heard it was the least interesting part and also should have been obvious. “His mom said it to Aidan.”

“She called Aidan a slut?”

Stella was bound to lose it on Aidan eventually—it was hard to blame her. But it was weird that she hadn’t mentioned some big fight. Stella confessed compulsively to me. Why not this? Had the argument escalated further? Had something even worse happened, something so terrible that Stella didn’t want even me to know?

“Come on, Mommy. Tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“What’s a slut?”

“Oh, Ella,” I said, trying not to sound too horrified. But the way the word kept popping out of her innocent little mouth was making me feel sick. “Please don’t say that again. It’s not a nice word.”

“Then why did Will’s mommy say it?”

“Oh, maybe she was really tired when she said it to Aidan,” I offered. “People sometimes say things that aren’t very nice when they’re tired.”

“You never do that. And she didn’t call Aidan a slut, Mommy,” Ella went on, saying it again as if I hadn’t just asked her to stop. She was focused on licking the edges of her cone, catching the drips. “She called his girlfriend a slut.”

A girlfriend? I’d heard about Aidan’s drinking and drugs and stealing money. I’d heard about the time he got arrested and how Stella fantasized about leaving him in jail. These were not good things that Stella had told me, and yet she had done so willingly. Now she was leaving out something innocent, like Aidan having a girlfriend? Why? Who was the girlfriend?

“And then she broke his phone,” Ella added.

“Stella broke Aidan’s phone?”

“Boom!” Ella imitated an explosion with her chubby little hands. “That’s what Will says. But when Daddy’s phone broke, it didn’t blow up like that. I think Will is lying. He lies a lot.”

Except Stella had complained—with great annoyance—about having to replace Aidan’s broken phone. “What’s Aidan’s girlfriend’s name?”

Ella shrugged. “Will calls her the flower girl,” she said, then rolled her eyes. “But I know that’s not her real name. No one’s named that. He’s lying about that, too.”

Rose: the flower girl.

RIDGEDALE READER

ONLINE EDITION

March 17, 2015, 5:03 p.m.

Baby’s Cause of Death Still Unknown

BY MOLLY SANDERSON

The medical examiner has declined to comment on the cause of death of the female infant found at the Essex Bridge. However, police have confirmed that the condition of the infant’s body makes it impossible to rule out homicide at this time.

Once again, the Ridgedale Police Department asks that anyone with information regarding the infant’s identity or cause of death contact their office as soon as possible at 888-526-1899.