The daylight, when I hit it, was very bright.

Chapter 15 — Mommy

An hour later I pulled up outside Camellia’s apartment complex, a police escort behind me, my hands not quite steady on the wheel.

I did not knock.

I went through the door, and there, on the living-room rug, sat my daughter — four years old, entirely unharmed, entirely unaware, coloring in a storybook with the deep concentration only a small child can bring to a picture of a whale.

Her sister — Camellia’s sister, who I would learn had been told only that she was babysitting, and knew nothing of any of it — sat nearby.