There was something in the way Lily had looked at the kitchen.

Not the glance of a child seeking a parent.

The glance of a child checking whether she was being overheard.

Marcus lowered his phone.

“Lily,” he said, more carefully now.

“What is it?”

And his daughter, still holding onto him, still with her face half-hidden against his shirt so that whoever was in the kitchen could not see her mouth move, whispered the sentence that ended one version of Marcus Vance’s life and began another.

“When you travel,” she whispered, “Sarah puts drops in my juice.”

Marcus froze.

Sarah had been his wife for ten months.

“What drops?” he said, keeping his own voice low, matching his daughter’s caution without yet understanding why.

“She says they’re vitamins,” Lily whispered.

“But then I feel funny.

I can’t sit still.