My nephew crawled seven blocks on a broken leg because there was no food for his little sister, but what he said about the man inside their apartment was even worse.

Carla took Marlene back to the shelter in a separate car while Officer Hensley sent a patrol unit to my house. Denise called ahead to the case aide. Everyone sounded calm because that was their job.

I was not calm.

All I could see was June’s missing shoe in Travis’s jacket pocket. His smile outside the courtroom. His voice saying, I’m just worried about my kids.

When I pulled up, a cruiser was already parked across the street.

Mrs. Whitcomb met me at the door with flour on her sleeve because apparently she had decided trauma required pancakes. She was seventy-two, five feet tall, and looked like she could shame a thunderstorm into apologizing.

“The children are in the den,” she said. “They are safe.”

I gripped the porch railing.

She held out a plastic sandwich bag.

Inside was a tiny black device no bigger than a shirt button.

“Bodie found it?” I asked.

She nodded. “June said her shoe buzzed. Bodie checked inside the lining.”

Officer Patel arrived behind me. She took the bag with gloved hands.

“GPS tracker,” she said. “Cheap one, but functional.”

I thought of June walking seven blocks in one shoe. Bare foot burning against pavement. Travis, holding the other shoe, still tracking her.

“How did he get it in there?” I whispered.

Mrs. Whitcomb’s mouth tightened. “A person who wants control finds small places to put it.”

Inside, the den was quiet. Bodie lay on the couch with his splinted leg on pillows, watching cartoons without really watching. June sat on the rug pushing two toy cars back and forth. She looked up when I entered.

“Aunt Tessa, I ate pancakes.”

“That’s good, baby.”

“Bodie said I can have more later.”

“You can have more whenever you’re hungry.”

She blinked at me, unsure whether this was a trick.

Bodie did not look away from the television. “The shoe was wrong.”

I sat beside him. “You noticed?”

He shrugged. “It made a lump. June doesn’t like lumps.”

Officer Patel stepped into the room carefully. “Bodie, did you see Travis put anything in June’s shoe?”

He nodded without looking at her. “When we were in the dark place. He said June didn’t need shoes because bad girls don’t go outside.”

June kept rolling the cars.

My eyes filled.

Officer Patel asked, “Did he keep one shoe?”

“Yeah. The red one. He said Cinderella didn’t get both shoes either.” Bodie finally looked at us. “But he said it mean.”

There was a strange kind of horror in learning how monsters joke.

That afternoon, the police swept my house and both children’s belongings. They found no additional trackers, but Officer Patel helped me turn off location sharing on my phone, change passwords, remove Marlene from old family sharing accounts, and check my car.

She found a second tracker magnetized under my rear bumper.

I had to sit down on the driveway.

My neighbor across the street, Mr. Jenkins, came outside pretending to water one bush for twenty minutes so he could watch the whole block. By four o’clock, half the neighborhood knew something was wrong, though not exactly what. People did not ask questions. They brought things.

A casserole.

Extra towels.

A booster seat.

A bag of gently used children’s clothes.

A nightlight shaped like a moon.

I had lived on that street for eight years and had never understood that ordinary people could become a fence when one of their own was threatened.

Marlene called from the shelter that evening on her new phone.

“Are they okay?”

“They’re safe.”

“Did he find you?”

“No. But he tried.”

She was silent.

“Marlene?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.” Her voice cracked. “You don’t know how many times I thought, just one more day. If I keep him calm one more day, I can think. If I keep the kids quiet one more day, I can plan. Then one more day becomes a month.”

I looked toward the den. Bodie was asleep. June had curled beside him, one hand on his blanket.

“I know more than I did,” I said.

“That’s not enough.”

“No. It isn’t.”

She cried quietly.

I let her.

After she hung up, I made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. June dipped her sandwich into the soup and laughed when it broke apart. It was the first real laugh I heard from her.

Bodie smiled at the sound.

Not fully. But close.

At bedtime, June panicked when I tried to turn off the lamp.

“No dark,” she cried, hands over her face. “No dark place.”

I turned the lamp back on so fast I nearly knocked it over.

“No dark,” I said. “Not here.”

Bodie watched from the air mattress I had put beside the bed. “Can the door stay open?”

“Wide open.”

“Can I see the hallway?”

“Yes.”

“Can you sit there?”

I sat on the floor between the hallway and the room until both children fell asleep.