Because then I’d be the one sitting like an ass at the conference table, drooling all over a bagel with cream cheese, watching the way her tongue wraps its way around a finger as she licks it clean.

When my phone rings, I find it in my pocket and see on the display screen: Martin Miller, the PI I hired to track our Willow down. I hurry, quickly, from the conference room and into the hallway, an eighth-floor balcony that looks down into the hotel’s atrium below, filled with banquet tables and plush sofas, tropical flowers and fish, dozens of big, fat koi that swim in ponds throughout the atrium.

Martin’s voice is reticent. He’s found something. I lay my hand on the balcony rail to steady myself, staring down on eight floors of nothingness that, when combined with the aftereffects of too much alcohol, make me woozy.

“What is it?” I ask, my voice discomposed. The koi, eight floors below, are little more than white-and-orange smudges in the water.

Martin says that he’s emailing me a newspaper article he found, dated the middle of March. There’s no mention of a Willow. Or a Ruby. But he says it might just be our girl.

I wait for the email to come through on my phone, my limbs numb by the time my phone vibrates the email’s arrival.

I open the article and there, staring me in the eye, is Willow Greer. Except that she’s not Willow Greer. The caption reads, Claire Dalloway, wanted for questioning in the death of an Omaha man and his wife, and for the kidnapping of an infant girl abducted March 16 from her home in Fort Collins, Colorado.

I skim the article and see that this Claire Dalloway may be armed, dangerous, that this man and his wife, Joseph and Miriam Abrahanson, were stabbed to death in their Omaha home while they slept. I read about the baby, Calla Zeeger, born to a lady named Lily and a man named Paul. In Fort Collins. Colorado. There are identifying features: the color of her eyes, the shade of her sparse hair, a close-up of a birthmark on the back of a leg. A port-wine stain, the article states, shaped like the state of Alaska.

There is a reward. For her return.

I read about Joseph and Miriam Abrahamson, Ms. Dalloway’s foster family, who graciously welcomed Claire into their home upon the death of her own parents when she was eight years old.

I read how they were murdered in their beds while they slept.

“The Abrahamsons have boys, as well,” Martin is telling me. “Two sons, two biological sons,” he adds. “Isaac and Matthew, both in their twenties. The oldest son, Isaac, has an alibi for the night in question. He works the third shift, stacking shelves at Walmart. He came home early in the morning of March 19 to find his parents dead, in bed.

“The other son, Matthew Abrahamson, is on the run. Like Claire Dalloway, wanted for questioning in the murder.”

“You didn’t tell anyone, did you, Martin?” I ask desperately.

“No, Chris, of course not. But we’ll need to,” he says. “We’ll need to turn your girl in. If she’s the one,” he says, and I think, of course, of course we do.

“Twenty-four hours,” I beg. “Just give me twenty-four hours,” and he says okay. I need to get to Heidi myself, I need to be the one to tell her.

I wonder if he means it, if Martin really will give me twenty-four hours before he phones the police.

There is a reward, I reread. For her return.

Good God, I think, telling Martin that I have to go. I must call Heidi. I must warn her. I dial the numbers, press send.

The phone rings and rings but there is no answer.

My eyes reread the words: Armed. Dangerous.

Stabbed.

Death.

WILLOW

The bus ride to Chicago was long. Over twenty-three hours to be exact, with some sixteen stops. Twice we had to gather all our belongings and move to a different bus, one that was going the same way as us. I saw more of the world than I’d ever seen: the mountains of Colorado that shrunk as we crossed the state, and became near nothingness, only cattle farm after cattle farm with so many cows jam-packed inside, it made me claustrophobic just looking at them all, fighting for food from the trough. We retraced our steps through Nebraska, crossed over the Missouri River, and were welcomed to Iowa by the people of the state, or so the sign on the side of the road said.

I chose Chicago because of Momma. There I was, staring at another big chart on the bus station wall. Arrivals and Departures it said. And I saw that word Chicago, and thought of Momma and her list of one days, and how she didn’t get to cross too much off that list before the Bluebird went tumbling down the road. I didn’t see Switzerland on that list, nor did I see Paris, but I did see Chicago, and I thought of that Magnificent Mile Momma longed to see—the one with the Gucci and Prada stores where she wanted to shop.

I thought that if Momma couldn’t see it for herself, then I’d see it for her.

The baby slept peacefully, wrapped up in the soft pink blanket on my lap. I didn’t dare set her or the suitcase down and so the three of us, we shared one seat. She slept much of the time but when her eyes were open I held her so she could see through the window, first the sunset and, later, the sunrise over the Gateway to the West, a city that used to be my home. At some gas station stop at a town called Brush, I lugged the baby and suitcase inside and purchased formula, like Momma used to feed Lily, and a plastic bottle. When the baby finally did fuss at some point in the night, I thrust that bottle in her mouth and watched her suck herself back to sleep.

I didn’t think much about the baby being cute, or the way she wrapped her tiny hand around my finger and squeezed. I wasn’t thinking about how her eyes watched me, or the words Little Sister scrawled across her shirt.

What I was thinking about were those sea anemones, the ones in a book Matthew had brought for me when I was a kid: would-be murderers in delicate, angelic bodies. I thought of their wispy tentacles when the baby twined her hand around my finger, I considered their brilliant colors when the baby looked and me and beamed. They looked like flowers but they were not. Instead, they were predators of the sea. Immortal. Injecting paralyzing venom into their prey so they could eat them alive.

This baby was a sea anemone.

I thought that I hated her, I did. But as the bus drifted across the country, and the baby held tight to my little finger, and from time to time just stared at me or smiled, I had to remind myself that she was evil, as if that thought just kept slipping from my mind. I told myself I wasn’t going to like her. Not one bit.

But in the end, I did.

* * *

As we boarded a new bus in Denver, some girl slid into the seat beside me, dropped down into the chair like a plane crashing from the sky, and asked, “What’s your baby’s name?” I opened my mouth but no sound came out. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Cat got your tongue?”

The girl was all skin and bones, her cheeks hollowed in. She wore clothes that were too big on her, an unshapely coat that just drooped. Her hair was dark, her eyes dark. Around her neck she wore a dog collar with spikes.

“No, it’s...” I stuttered, unable to come up with a name.

“She’s gotta have a name, don’t she?” not even flinching when I couldn’t tell her my baby’s name. Course I couldn’t say the baby’s name was Calla. Then she might have known. “How about Ruby?” she asked then, as she gazed out the window, watching as the bus bypassed a Ruby Tuesday restaurant on the side of the road. There it sat, right before the expressway entrance. Karma, I believed.

I stared at those words, the big bold red letters. I’d never known anyone named Ruby before. I thought of that brilliant red gemstone, red, the color of blood.