Page 101 of Weight of Guilt

Everything is chaos. It’s time for dismissal. The busses are outside. The parent pickup line is backed up into the street. That just adds even more confusion—which is perfect.

The boy’s teacher counts her line in the chaos—once, twice. What she doesn’t notice is that the boy has wandered away.

He’s twenty feet from me now, his backpack on one shoulder, turning in a slow circle.

He’s looking for a car that isn’t there.

Then he sees me.

He knows my face. He can’t work out where from—which is what I was counting on.

“Mason,” I call.

He looks at me, then past me at the pickup line.

“Your mama got held up,” I say. “She asked me to come get you.”

He doesn’t move right away. He looks back at the doors, at all the teachers counting all those children. Then he looks at me again.

“Is she at the hospital?” he asks.

The hospital? His father must have told him that his mother was there last night. The boy is bright. He’s a thinker.

Which makes him perfect. But I already know that.

“Yes,” I say. “She wants me to take you there.”

He steps toward me. There’s a tentative trust in his eyes, the kind that doesn’t know yet that it’s misplaced.

That’s when I know I’ve won.

Today, I will get exactly what I came for. And I couldn’t be happier about it.

Chapter

Fifty-Two

Fog Lake Elementary sat two blocks off the highway. Wren got as far as the corner and stopped.

Cars sat nose-to-tail the whole length of the street. She peered around them, trying to see what was going on. That was when she saw three fire trucks parked at angles in front of the school, lights still going.

Was this a fire drill? Most likely.

Still, concern pulsed through her.

Finally, the pickup line started to move, and she crept forward until she could turn into the lot.

The front of the school was full of children. It wasn’t the normal afternoon pickup line. It was organized chaos. Teachers moved through the crowd with clipboards in hand, calling names.

Wren found a free space, threw her car into Park, and climbed out.

The school’s fire alarm blared in the distance.

Don’t assume the worst. Mason is here. Find him.

She moved through the crowd looking for Mason’s yellow backpack.

A school aide stepped into her path. “Ma’am, I need you back behind⁠—”