My son brought his boyfriend home for Sunday dinner, and the second I saw that young man’s face I went cold with a serving spoon still in my hand. Twenty minutes later I had locked him in my own basement and was calling the police — and I was wrong to do it, and I would do it again, and both of those are true.

They were the missing posters. The first age-progression had just come out and Suzanne’s sister was printing them, and I had brought forty of them to leave on the table by the door, and I had asked the chair beforehand and she had said fine.

I was standing by that table with them in my hands when Verity Rakes came across the floor.

Roarke’s mother. She was sixty-two then.

She took that stack out of my hands — both hands, no hesitation — and she put it face down under her own arm.