• • •

The shoes had been purchased at Target. Would they make something of that too, that her son’s feet could be anyone’s feet? Carrie had loved buying him clothes, dressing him in colors that suited him, like blue and green, yellow and pale orange. John never went with them; Ben sat in the cart while Carrie picked things out. She’d always bought him a small toy, something with moving parts, something he could bang or work with his thumbs, to hold at the register, a reward for being good. He never begged for anything, never whined. Always happy with what he had. Not like the rest of the family: not ambitious like John at work or Carrie’s mother or even Carrie when she was young, always striving. It was as though Ben had been cast from something different.

She stared at the shoe on the ground, its color almost gray, the moldy green around the eyelets, the laces muddy and dark. She couldn’t bear to touch it, and she was glad; that was, finally, the right instinct. This shoe wasn’t Target’s, wasn’t hers, wasn’t her son’s. This shoe belonged to the police.

John, Nolan, Forrester, and the other technicians came in a group, racing down the path, Nolan well behind the others, panting. They’d heard the screams, the frantic barks. They hadn’t seen Carrie rise from her crouch on the ground and run flat out into the water, shrieking her son’s name over and over, splashing, kicking, until the man with the dog waded in next to her and persuaded her to come back out, to calm down, to pet the dog, that it was going to be okay.

Neil McGibbon, he said his name was. Half soaked after going in after her, wringing out the tail of his shirt. He gave a statement, told them exactly what had happened, but he left out the parts that were dangling, the parts that made no sense: that Carrie thought the dog wasn’t his, that she seemed to know the dog, to know what he liked. Those weren’t things he could explain; they were things he felt. And how seldom did anyone in law enforcement ask you how you felt? They wanted what you knew. What you saw. What you heard. The dog was muddy. The dog loved the pond. The woman loved dogs. Neil McGibbon had stumbled upon something that had seemed simple, then turned into more.

Neil was ready to go, having done his civic duty, but the dog and Carrie seemed to have other plans. Carrie sat shivering in her soaking pants, clinging to the dog as Neil clipped on the leash, breathing her good-bye into his flank.

“You, uh, can come visit him any time,” he said gently. “I live right over there.” He pointed across the field to the back of a house that looked just like Carrie and John’s, with pale yellow siding and green trim instead of red. “If you squint, you can probably see him watching out the window, his paws on the sliding glass door. Some days he scans the pond all afternoon, looking for birds.”

She shook her head, wiped her face. “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“It would…help me, really. You could walk him; he needs that.”

She gave the dog one last squeeze and said she was sorry, but that would be too hard.

“She loves dogs,” John offered.

“Yeah, I get it. I really do.” Neil pulled gently on the leash. “Say good-bye, Jackie,” he said, and the dog barked, offered his paw.

The cops smiled—such a nice respite in the grinding routine of police work to deal with a dog, something alive that didn’t talk back—but Carrie’s mouth was pulled small, grim. She took the dog’s paw and shook it, holding back more tears. She didn’t dare say what she wanted to say. She turned away, couldn’t bear to watch the dog’s rolling gait as they walked off.

Carrie sat in the grass, folded her arms against her knees, and hung her head. The exhaustion of it all, the weight of these tilting, circling questions, the heavy, damp breath of these men around her, asking the same thing over and over. Combing through old places, looking for one new thing. Everything always coming back to her. Everything always her fault. Couldn’t someone else find something important for a change? Why did every clue form a mantle over her head?

“What happens now?” John asked.

“Forensics on the shoe. Dredge the pond again tomorrow at first light.”

“What about the dog guy?”

“What about him?”

“You don’t think he’s a suspect?”

“Him? God no. Wrong place, wrong time.”

“But…he can see our house from his. And his dog—”

“Smelled something in a public place. He wasn’t even here, according to your wife. It’s not like we found the shoe at his house.”

“But what if it smelled of the guy? If that’s why the dog went into the pond and fished it out in the first place? You’re not going to go look at his car, at his—”

“John,” Nolan said with a sigh. “We looked at everybody’s car in this complex already. Every. Single. Car. As well as hundreds of sedans around the Main Line that people thought might be the one.”

“So look again!”

“The guy drives a light green SUV. You can see it in his driveway from here.”

“He had messy hair though, like the guy at the Y, right? Tousled, didn’t you think, honey?”

Carrie looked at her husband. “I…didn’t notice.”

“You didn’t?”

“John,” Nolan said, pulling him to the side, lowering his voice. “What we need to do is talk more with your wife. As soon as…well, as soon as possible. Soon as she’s up to it.”

“What are you saying over there? Why are you whispering?”

“I guess she’s up to it.” Nolan sighed. “We are saying, Mrs. Morgan, that we’d like you to come down to the station tonight to talk more. Since you were here first, before the shoe was found and all.”

“What are you suggesting?” she said, lifting up her head, suddenly alert.

“It’s just procedure. Just following the book.”

“You think I planted that shoe? That I knew it was there?”

“Hang on, babe,” John said. “Nobody said anything remotely like that!”

“Well, of course they’re not going to say it, John!”

John looked at Nolan, who gave a slight shrug. The five of them standing on one side of the path, her seated on the other.

“That’s it,” she said, standing up. She brushed the front of her yoga pants. Wet and full of dog hair. She worked a tuft of hair downward, curled it into a tiny pile, then slipped it into the pocket of her jacket. “I’m not saying anything more to you without a lawyer.”

“Carrie.” John said it like a warning, like she was being ridiculous, even though he’d been thinking the same thing, ever since Ben had come back. The gloves in the glove compartment, the milk, the box of diapers. How long did it take to find a quarter? Who was so ditzy they could miss a child being taken from their own backseat? And his own parents, who’d been doubting ever since he’d told them he was getting engaged to the girl from State: Who is she? Her mother lives where? How well do you really know her?

“You heard me,” Carrie said.

The girl who loved to talk in the car and when they were tucked in at night and about to fall asleep was done talking. Just like the day when Maya Mercer had come to interview her—the camera crews, the producers, all of them hanging on her every word.

And no one believing a single syllable she said.