As Hugh watched Saheed following Wren like a loyal subject, he thought of all the crap he had pulled when he was trying to get a girl’s attention, and he vowed never to let any guy treat her the way he had treated girls in high school. But he also knew that he couldn’t protect her. That she would be heartbroken one day, and he would have to see her cry.

That was fatherhood. Fatherhood was wanting to put his daughter in a bubble where she could never be hurt, while knowing that he had hurt someone else’s daughter, once. Fatherhood was plotting the future murder of a sweet kid named Saheed because he had the wisdom to see that nobody else in the world was as awesome as Wren.

Now, Hugh scrolled through forgotten conversations in his mind. In any of them, had Wren mentioned a boy?

Wren had said she was here with Bex. But this was an abortion clinic. Bex was too old to need one. Maybe his sister had come here for another reason, but why would she have taken Wren out of school to accompany her?

Unless …

He couldn’t even finish that sentence in his mind.

He decided that after he saved Wren’s life, he would find out who the boy was. And then maybe kill him.

Hugh dialed the phone number of the Center again. This time, on the third ring, a woman answered. Not Wren.

But he had made first contact. Now, he thought. Go.

“This is Lieutenant McElroy with the Jackson Police. Am I on speakerphone?”

“No.”

“Who am I speaking with?”

“Um, my name is Izzy …”

“Izzy,” Hugh said, “I’m here to help you. Can I talk to the person who might be able to resolve this situation?”

He heard her say to someone: “It’s the police and they want you.”

And then: “Yeah?”

The voice of the shooter rumbled like a stick drawn across fence posts. Just that one syllable opened a cave Hugh could peer into. The word was deep, boiling, wary. But it was also one word, rather than a barrage of them. Which meant he was listening.

“This is Detective Hugh McElroy of the Jackson Police Department. I’m with the hostage negotiation unit. I’m here to talk to you and ensure the safety of you and everyone else in the building.”

“I have nothing to talk about,” the shooter said. “These people are murderers.”

“Okay,” Hugh replied, no judgment. An acknowledgment. “What’s your name, sir?” he asked, although he already knew. “What would you like to be called?”

“George.”

In the background, Hugh could hear an agonized cry. Please let it not be Bex, he thought. “Are you hurt, George?”

“I’m fine.”

“Is anyone else hurt? Does someone need a doctor? It sounds like there might be some people in pain.”

“They don’t deserve help.”

Hugh felt the eyes of Chief Monroe and at least a dozen other officers on him. He turned his back. The relationship he needed to build with George Goddard was between the two of them, and no one else. “Whatever happened in there, George, you’re not to blame. I know that there are other people at fault here. Whatever happened, happened. That’s over and done. But you and I can work together, now, to make sure no one else gets hurt. We can resolve this … and help you … at the same time.”

Hugh waited for a response, but there wasn’t one. Well. It beat Fuck you. As long as George was still on the line, he had a chance.

“Here’s my phone number, in case we get disconnected,” Hugh said. He rattled off the digits. “I’m the one in charge out here.”

“Why should I trust you?” George asked.

“Well,” Hugh said, having known this question would come, “we haven’t stormed the building, have we? My gun is still in my holster, George. I want to work with you. I want us to both get what we want.”

“You can’t give me what I want,” George answered.

“Try me.”

“Really.”

Hugh could hear the sarcasm in George’s voice. “Really,” he confirmed.

“Then bring my grandchild back to life,” George said, and he hung up the phone.

Eleven a.m.

IT WASN’T AS IF THE WAITING ROOM OF THE CENTER screamed We do abortions here. It reminded Wren a little of her dentist’s office: bad art on the walls, magazines from the Stone Age, a television playing some dumb talk show. There was a couch and a smattering of chairs, none of which matched. The coffee table had deep grooves in it, as if it had come from a previous, careless home.

Then again, not everyone was here to have an abortion. She wasn’t. Her aunt wasn’t. The other woman in the waiting room clearly wasn’t either: an older woman with sleek silver hair and red-rimmed eyes.

Wren wondered if that woman was making the assumption that she was pregnant, that she had gotten herself “in trouble.” She was here for the exact opposite reason.

Could people tell that she was a virgin? Did hooking up with a guy change you, somehow, from the inside out? Would she come downstairs the morning after It happened and would her father instantly know by looking at her?

The thought embarrassed her. What if her dad could tell, and he asked her about it? Could you pass me the salt, and who the hell did you sleep with?

It wasn’t really that she was afraid he’d kill Ryan. (He might want to, but he was an officer of the law, through and through.) It was that for so long it had just been the two of them. Even though she didn’t think things would change—and didn’t want things to change—it felt like there would always be someone else between them now.

The lady at the front desk who had checked her in was chatting with a pink-haired girl who had just come into the Center. “Sorry I’m late, Vonita,” the girl said.

“Thank the Lord you’re here. I don’t have a single escort out there.”

“What happened to Sister Donna?”

“She didn’t show,” Vonita said. “Maybe the Vatican finally got her to quit.”

Aunt Bex nudged Wren with her shoulder and raised her eyebrows. Wren smirked, an entire conversation without words. It had always been like that between them. “A nun?” Bex whispered.

“And you thought you were the least likely person to be here,” Wren replied. “How much school do you think I’m going to miss? Another whole period?”

“Aren’t you here to keep that very thing from happening?” Bex smiled. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about. Personally, I am riveted by the reading material.”

On the coffee table beside them was a stack of pamphlets: “The Gynecological Visit and Exam—What to Expect.”

“For Parents and Male Partners and Friends: After Her Abortion.”

“What Is HPV?”

There was also a Sharpie marker. Wren hiked her knee up and, with the marker, began to drawn stars on the sole of her Converse sneaker. One star, two. A constellation—Virgo. Just for the sheer sarcasm.

She knew that her aunt wasn’t as calm as she was making herself out to be. Aunt Bex had told Wren repeatedly that she didn’t feel comfortable coming inside, and would drop her off and wait in the parking lot. Until they’d gotten here, that is, and had seen the row of protesters. Then Aunt Bex had said there was no way in hell she was sending her girl in solo.

Last week in Aunt Bex’s studio she had heard something awesome on NPR: for the first time ever scientists had watched two neutron stars collide over a hundred million light-years away. It was called a kilonova, and it was such an enormous crash that gravitational waves were created, and light was released. The dude being interviewed said that it took a collision of forces that giant to create the particles that made up gold and platinum. Wren thought that was something her dad would love: to know that the most precious materials came from the clashes of titans.

She had to remember to tell him that. So she inked a tiny star on the crescent of skin between her left thumb and index finger. At dinner, he’d see it and say, You’re probably going to die of ink poisoning, you know, which would remind Wren to tell him about the kilonova. She’d conveniently omit the part about where she was when she’d drawn it on herself.

That’s what you did for people you loved, right? You protected them from what they didn’t want to know.

—

AFTER OLIVE’S APPOINTMENT, she had walked into the waiting room. Staggered, really. She didn’t know how she had gotten from the examination room to here. One minute she had been sitting with Harriet, the nurse practitioner she’d been seeing for years for her checkups, and trying to absorb what she had been told. Then just like that, her brain had hit its overload capacity. Somehow she had said goodbye, stood up, walked down the hall, and stood in front of the reception desk, her features blank.

Vonita, the lovely woman who ran the Center, had come from her desk and wrapped her massive arms tight around Olive. “Miss Olive,” she said. “How you holding up?”

How could she answer that?

Vonita steered her toward a seat in the waiting room, near a young girl who was tapping her foot anxiously. “You don’t have to leave yet,” Vonita said. “You just sit here, get your bearings.”