But that afternoon, everything was not okay.
Noah had been fussy since morning.
At first Emily thought he was tired.
Then she thought he might be teething.
But by midday, the crying changed.
It turned thin and desperate.
The kind of crying that makes your chest tighten because you can hear need inside it.
Emily carried him around the kitchen, bouncing him the way her mother did.
She checked the pantry.
Crackers gone.
Peanut butter gone.
Cereal gone.
She opened the refrigerator.
Nothing but a bottle of ketchup, half an onion, and cold air.
She opened it again as if reality might feel embarrassed and correct itself.
It didn’t.
She stood there with the fridge door open and Noah crying against her shoulder and felt fear rise like heat.
Then she remembered Aunt Lisa.
Lisa was Rebecca’s older cousin.
She worked at a salon in Dearborn and helped when she could.
Not often.
But enough times to become associated with rescue.
Emily had her number saved in the old cracked phone Rebecca kept in the drawer for emergencies.
What Emily did not know was that Aunt Lisa had changed numbers three weeks earlier after an ugly breakup and never told Rebecca because life had been too chaotic and the update seemed unimportant compared with everything else.
That one small oversight changed everything.
Emily typed carefully.
Aunt Lisa, can you send me $20? I need to buy milk for Noah. I promise I’ll pay you back. Please.
She read it three times.
Then she pressed send.
At that same moment, on the other side of the city, Daniel Whitmore was stepping out of a black SUV in front of the Whitmore Plaza Tower.
He was forty-three.
A real estate magnate.
