For the first couple of weeks after his father died, Noah clung to me. Physically clung to me, his arms around my legs if I happened to be standing up, snuggling up to my breast, thumb in his mouth, if I was lying down. It helped me to keep such close physical contact-I could feel how alive my son was, feel the fierceness of his small heart beating, somehow in sync with my own. We were adrift in the same powerful current of grief. In my mind Noah and I were being swept along by a great and terrible river, and people along the riverbank kept waving to us and urging us to come ashore, but we had each other and we didn’t want their comfort because it was right for us to be carried along by torrents so deep, so powerful, that they opened up canyons in the earth, eroding the world, making new landscapes of sorrow and loss.

Three days after the funeral-it had been a nightmare, getting Jed’s remains released, and seemed to have taken forever, although it was only about ten days-Noah stopped clinging and he was no longer sucking his thumb, and he said to me, “It’s really real, isn’t it? Daddy’s really gone and he’s never coming back?” I said yes, it was really real, his Daddy was really gone, and Noah thought about that for a few moments and he looked me straight in the eye-we were at the kitchen table, pushing our food around but not really eating-and he said, “Daddy wants me to grow up and be strong for you, so that’s what I’m going to do,” and there was something about his tone that made it seem he was speaking with his father’s voice, as if Jed was looking at me through our little boy’s eyes and saying goodbye, and the amazing thing is, I didn’t break down. I didn’t burst into tears. Just hearing him say that gave me so much strength and confidence that I was able to reach out and take Noah’s hand and say, “You’re already strong. You’re my superhero. But I’d rather you didn’t grow up too fast, okay? I need you to be my little boy for a while.”

After that we were okay. The emptiness was still there, of course-sleeping was especially difficult for me-but somehow we’d come ashore without me noticing, and we were both in the world again, doing what you do to get through each day.

Remembering how Noah had shown me the way, how an eight-year-old’s inner strength had far surpassed my own, makes me believe that he’ll be strong enough to keep his own mind, no matter what poison is being spread by those who want to use him. Missy keeps warning me about Evangeline, what a terrible, evil person she is. For all I know, that’s true. But what sticks in my craw is Noah’s teacher, Mrs. Delancey. That bitch! Her I know, or thought I did, and it seems to me unutterably cruel that she must have moved to Humble for no other purpose than to ingratiate herself with Noah and with me. All the while planning to steal him away.

That’s who these people are. Never forget.

Meanwhile, after the strange little man leaves us, Missy Barlow wants to show me around. I’m not kidding-the woman who helped abduct me wants to give me a tour of her house-in effect my prison-and show off all the cool stuff she and her weirdo husband have accumulated.

“The design had to be approved by the Ruler council, of course, but Eldon really did most of the design thinking himself.”

‘Design thinking,’ it turns out, is when you think of something-in this case a Really Rich Ski Lodge-and then hire someone who actually designs it. In Missy’s world, apparently, buying the Mona Lisa is the same as painting it. That sounds crazy, but I’m not about to defend her sanity. It’s as if her life is unraveling, and she thinks if she talks fast enough the trend will reverse itself. You don’t go from being a successful, law-abiding citizen to a felon-in-hiding without it having some pretty strong effects on your mental status. And who knows, maybe she was always a few bricks shy of a load, as Jed liked to say.

“We’re the only Fives with a house anything like this one,” she brags, as we tour the shuttered, shaded interior. “Fives, that’s for Level Five, there’s seven levels altogether, and the only one who’s ever reached Seven is Arthur Conklin. There’s only like about ten who ever made Six. Ruler Weems is a Six. So is Evangeline, although some of us sort of assume she cheated because she’s Arthur’s wife and nobody dared to tell her she didn’t pass. So being a Five is, like, really high in the organization. There’s maybe fifty Fives, and you have to share-in a million a year, minimum, to stay a Five. Until you’re like sixty years old and then you’re an Honorary, and you can stay at your level even if you don’t make as much money.”

“Share-in” is the Ruler version of tithing, and Missy is really proud that she and Eldon share-in way more than a million a year. Which Eldon calls “the price of genius,” at least according to his chatty wife. His particular genius being in gameware design, whatever that is, exactly. My first thought is Guitar Hero, like maybe he designed the fake guitars-isn’t that gameware?-but Missy rolls her eyes and explains that Eldon’s genius is way, way more impressive than Guitar Hero because, artificial drumroll please, he designs technologies for cell-phone gamers. Plus with the money he earned from his first patent he had the foresight to buy a ring tone subscription service, and that’s turned out to be “like, a superinvestment.”

“Ring tones?” I ask. “That’s how you got rich?”

Missy must sense that I’m less than impressed, because she huffs herself up and goes, “Me and Eldon own some of the most famous ring tones in the world!”

“Great. Listen, Missy, I appreciate the tour, you and your husband have a fabulous house, even if we’re sort of hiding in it with the shades drawn, but I’m really not in the mood for House Beautiful, okay? Maybe later, but right now all I care about is how you can help me get my son back.”

“We’re doing all we can,” she protests, getting all sulky. “You heard Ruler Weems. This is a really difficult situation. Not to mention dangerous. Me and Eldon, we’re risking our lives to keep you safe.”

“Okay, you’re risking your life. You’re my angel. Where’s Noah? Where are they keeping him?”

“I don’t know. Someplace we can’t get to, that’s all I know. Probably the Pinnacle.”

“The Pinnacle?”

“Yeah, the Pinnacle is where Arthur lives. And Evangeline. It’s way up the mountain, sort of like built into the mountain, you know? Everybody says it’s fabulous and amazing, but I’ve never seen it. You can’t get to the Pinnacle unless you’re a Six. It’s supposed to be superfortified. Eldon says if the world ever blew up, like in a nuclear war, the Pinnacle would survive.”

“So he’s seen the Pinnacle?”

“No, but he knows people who have. Eldon knows everybody important.”

“Does that man who came to see us, Mr. Weems, does he live in the Pinnacle?”

“He used to, but not anymore. Not since Eva decided to take over.”

“Missy, listen to me. I’m going to assume you’re a good person, okay? And that your involvement in this is well-intentioned. But I want you to do me a favor. I want you to persuade Eldon to take me to the Pinnacle, okay?”

“I don’t think he can do that,” she says, reluctantly. “Ruler Weems might, but not Eldon.”

“When is he coming back, Ruler Weems?”

A shrug. “Dunno. In case you haven’t noticed, nobody tells me anything,” she adds, sounding petulant.

At that moment her husband appears on the grand stairway. He doesn’t seem at all pleased that Missy is conducting a house tour. “Upstairs, both of you.”

“But the place is all closed up from the outside,” Missy protests. “Why do we have to hide in the bedroom?”

“Because we want to stay alive,” he says. “Upstairs, now!”