She climbed out of the vehicle and sank to her knees in the driveway. Was this real? Or was it a nightmare?
She pressed her hands into her skull, felt the pinprick of pain as her nails dug into her scalp.
Wide awake. Not a nightmare.
Dear God. What have I done?
“Mom, where’s Johnny?” Matt’s thirteen-year-old voice cracked with emotion.
“Where’s Johnny?” Luke repeated, his voice thick with fear.
“Did we leavewithout Johnny?” James shrieked, every syllable pitched with horror.
She had forgotten many things in her life. Car keys. Sunglasses. Her phone. Even her purse.
But now she had actually lostan entire child.
Johnny had no phone. Johnny was onlyeight years old.
And she’d left him. Left him at a truck stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
She cast her mind frantically over their last stop. They finished eating. She told the boys to get in the car while she used the restroom.
Then she just got in the car and drove away. She thought he was under the blankets. But she didn’t check to make sure.
And that—
She looked at her watch.
That wasTwo hours ago.
She struggled to her feet, clutched the side of the minivan, and vomited.
Chapter Fifteen
Piper
Piper pulled into her driveway, stopped the car, and then stared, perplexed at the strange little tableau next door.
Three boys stood beside a minivan with all the doors flung open. The older boys wore a catatonic expression while the youngest openly sobbed.
Meanwhile her neighbor ... what was her name? Cathy? Caroline? She’d only met this neighbor once, briefly, the day they moved in.
Whatever her name, this woman stood beside her minivan, bent at the waist, shoulders heaving as she ...
Vomited?
Piper squinted. Yup. That’s right. Her neighbor was vomiting all over the driveway.
The woman’s face was paper white with a clammy sheen. Piper had seen that look before on diplomats attempting to power through state dinners while suffering the double whammy of jet lag and a don’t-drink-the-water stomach bug.
She opened the center console of her SUV and grabbed the paper towels, trash bags, and first aid kit stashed inside.
Scenarios whizzed through her mind. Could her neighbor be a day drinker? A drug user? A microdosing tech bro? Had she traveled to the Congo recently and contracted Ebola?
Piper ran across her own impeccable green lawn, maintained with pride and joy by her husband on the days he was actually home, and crossed the border into the Land of Boys, where everything from the baseballs in the flower beds to the bin of hockey sticks and Nerf guns on the front porch screamedThis is why we can’t have nice things.
She approached her neighbor warily.
