“What happened to the guy who hit her?”

“Roman? I mean, I guess he was the one. No idea what became of him. And that sucks. Guys who hit women don’t stop. He’s probably hitting somebody else now. The police have his name, but everything happened so fast, I don’t know what else to do at this point.”

“Tell us how we can help,” her mother said.

“You’re already helping. Jesus. And just so you know, that was my first breakdown. I didn’t want the kids to see me falling apart.”

“We’re proud of you for stepping up, C-Shell,” her father said.

“They’re so little.” It was hard to speak around the lump in her throat. “What the hell am I going to do? I don’t know the first thing about kids, much less kids who’ve been through this kind of trauma. I am completely unprepared.” She paused. Crushed the Kleenex in her fist. “And scared.”

“Trust me,” Jackson said, “kids are scary even when you have time to prepare. That’s why I’ve never had any.”

Virginia elbowed him. “You’ll change your mind after you grow up.”

“Hey—”

“Go open another bottle of wine,” said their dad. “We already killed the first one.”

“How much do Addie and Flick know about what happened?” asked her mother. “You said you didn’t think they’d been abused, but were they aware that something wasn’t right?”

“Tough question. They’ve never mentioned seeing anyone hurt their mom, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t see anything. Joan, the therapist, told me to watch and listen. For what, I’m not sure. I keep going over and over that day in my mind, and I’m still confused. I can only imagine how those kids feel inside.” Caroline still hadn’t discovered what, if anything, Flick and Addie knew about the man who had hurt their mother. She and the social workers had tried to frame their questions carefully. Did your mommy have visitors over to your apartment?

No.

Maybe for a sleepover?

No.

Did anyone ever have breakfast at your place?

No.

As far as the children seemed to know, their mother went to work. They went to school and Nila looked after them. And their mom came home. Angelique had been a master at hiding things.

Caroline hugged her knees up to her chest. “Have you ever seen a dead body up close?”

“Oh, sweetie.” Her mom shuddered visibly.

The memory made Caroline shudder, too, recalling the shock and horror that had enveloped her that day. She would never be able to un-see the scene in the apartment. “It’s terrible in a really . . . special way. You look at this person and realize she’s just gone. An empty shell. She’ll never feel anything again. She’ll never feel love or joy or sadness or anger. All her potential vanished. The things she might have done with her life—for the world, for her kids—are over. They’ll never happen. That’s what went through my head during the longest fifteen minutes of my life. That’s about how long I waited for help to arrive. I had to set my phone on the table in order to use it, because my hand was shaking so hard. I could barely touch the numbers to call 911.”

“That must have been so tough,” her father said. “So you never knew about her drug use?”

“I didn’t know a thing about it. Nothing. She seemed to be in a great place in her career and with her kids. Except . . . some guy was hitting her. The therapist I’ve been talking to online told me that it’s not uncommon for a victim of violence to get hooked on drugs. Heroin completely eliminates pain—physical and emotional. But I thought I knew her. How did I miss the fact that she was using drugs?”

“Addicts have a thousand ways to hide their addiction,” Virginia pointed out. “As far as you know, she was new to using. Could be she had a bad mix. Or maybe she was in recovery and no one knew. And then this was a relapse. A lot of overdoses happen in relapse, because the addict loses her tolerance for the drug.”

“That’s what the EMTs said, and the police investigator agreed. So did the medical examiner. They said the signs can be subtle if you don’t know what to look for. There were little details I didn’t make sense of until it was too late. Like I noticed razor blades missing from my sewing kit, and I kept running out of foil. I had no idea those were dots to connect. My God, it was surreal.”

“You told us on the phone that it’s complicated,” said Mom. “You weren’t exaggerating.”

In the swift exodus and journey west, Caroline had given her family a massively oversimplified explanation. With the kids present nearly every moment since the day of Angelique’s death, she had not been able to go into detail about the suspected abuse, the overdose, their uncertain immigration status. She wanted to be absolutely truthful with them, answering their questions in simple, straightforward terms. But she was wary of giving them too much information before they were ready to hear it.

Now she tossed her tissue into the fire and watched it incinerate. “It’s complicated on so many levels. I mentioned Angelique was Haitian. One thing I didn’t tell you is that she was also undocumented. At first she had a visa. It’s actually not that uncommon for high-fashion models to come on a temporary work visa and overstay. Or they come without a visa at all and work off the books. Angelique did it both ways. Her visa expired and she was working off the books. Turns out her agency was taking advantage of her, too.”

“Does that mean the kids are also undocumented?” asked her father.

“I suppose so. She arrived in New York when Flick was one and Addie was an infant. See my dilemma? I don’t know what on earth to do about it. I’m worried about asking too many questions about their status, because God knows what would happen if they were targeted for deportation now.”

“They’re little kids,” Jackson said. “That would never happen.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Virginia told him. “These days, anything can happen. When I worked at the law firm, one of the associates had a case where a nursing mother was separated from her baby. It was awful. Just heart-wrenching.”

“Do you know of any friends or family Angelique might have had in Haiti?” asked Mom. “Anyone at all?”

Caroline shook her head. “There’s no one. That’s why I agreed to have my name on the guardian slip for the kids’ school. It didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time. Friends do it for each other all the time.” She couldn’t remember the precise moment she realized her life had changed irretrievably. Now she realized that moment had happened the day she’d casually agreed to be named the kids’ guardian.

“And you’re confident there’s no other family.”

“Yes, but even if they did have relatives there, the kids have no memory of Haiti. Angelique was an only child, raised by a single father who died when she was a teenager. She had it really rough.” Caroline paused and decided not to get into exactly how rough it had been for Angelique in her native country. That would take all night. “She never knew her mother. Made it on her own as a model. She was discovered on a shoot in Haiti and eventually managed to get herself to New York. When I first met her, she was at the top of her game, constantly in demand, making gobs of money. That’s how it looked to me, anyway. To everyone who knew her. As it turns out, her life in the city was rough, too, but I found that out too late.” She shivered despite the heat from the fire.