SONIA DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER with the phone until she was back in her car and driving away from the McGuire house, the Corolla gobbling up icy asphalt, fishtailing all over the road. By then, it had stopped ringing. She hit MISSED CALLS, saw Red’s number pop up, and stabbed TALK. It didn’t even have a chance to ring before she heard Red’s voice, breathless on the other end.

“I found him,” Red said.

“Henry? Where?”

“The site.”

She frowned, talking louder than she had to. “What?”

“The construction site in town,” Red said, sounding exasperated. “The Bijou, the old theater, you know?”

Sonia was struggling to steer and balance the phone on her shoulder, not normally a difficult feat, but at the moment, it felt next to impossible. All around her, the winter wind boomed and roared, never going away completely. “What was he doing there?” Suddenly she remembered the trailer that stayed parked behind the chain-link, serving as the office for the project, and how Red once said he sometimes holed up there when he didn’t want to go home. He’d even tried to convince her to meet him there for a quickie one night. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah, he’s—” Red sounded flustered. “He’s fine. Just get here, okay?”

She did, putting the pedal down, disregarding the weather and the slippery roads. Through the flying snow, the storefronts of downtown leaped into her headlights like a series of flat, painted canvases. She shot past them and swung up in front of the remains of the theater, almost skidding out of control, and sprang out and ran along the chain-link fence looking for a way in. On the other side, under its fresh layer of white, the sagging husk of the theater looked like an arctic shipwreck. Over by the trailer, hinges squeaked and a rectangle of light swung open in the dark.

“Sonia?” Red’s voice, shouting over the wind. “Is that you, princess?”

“It’s me,” she said. “How do I get through there?”

“Hold on.” He staggered down out of the trailer, wading through the drifts, and Sonia saw that he was carrying Henry in his arms, wrapped in a blanket. The boy was clutching a backpack. “There’s an opening off to your left.”

They met at the fence gate, and Red passed Henry over to her. “I was in the trailer going over some payroll stuff when I heard a noise. I found him over there…” He nodded vaguely in the direction of the theater. “He was curled up on the ground.”

“God.” Sonia looked at the boy’s face. It was filthy, bruised with ash and dirt, but she didn’t see any blood or sign of injury. His eyes were open, watching her, dusty orbs in the night.

“Hey, bud. You okay?”

Henry nodded, hugged his backpack closer, as if he feared she might take it from him.

“You shouldn’t have come out here,” Sonia said. “It’s very dangerous. We were worried about you.”

He blinked and nodded. “Where’s my daddy?”

Good fucking question, kid. Sonia felt a wasp of anger fly up from her stomach and plant its stinger in her throat. It didn’t matter what Owen had been through—the thought of him abandoning the boy in the truck on a snowy night was enough to make her want to call the police on him and find a better guardian for his son. Shifting the boy’s weight to her shoulder, she took out her cell phone and started dialing.

“Who are you calling now?” Red asked.

“Lonnie Mitchell.”

“Hold on.” He touched her wrist. “Let’s not do anything rash.”

She gaped at him. “What are you talking about? Henry could’ve frozen to death or fallen through one of the holes in the theater and broken his neck.” She was aware of Henry watching her, following the conversation avidly, and tried to soften her tone. “It’s dark out here, Red, and it’s freezing cold.”

“You’re right,” he said. “But if you call the police”—he lowered his voice to just above a whisper—“they’re only going to take him away.”

At this, Sonia felt the boy stiffening in her arms. That’s the idea, she wanted to say, followed by: Since when are you such an advocate of Owen Mast? But neither of these things were what Henry needed to hear right now. As it was, he already looked on the cusp of tears. She could feel him trembling in the Polarfleece blanket that Red had swaddled him in.

“Look,” Red said. He stared at her for a long time before continuing. “Let me talk to Owen first. I’ll pour some coffee into him, sober him a little, and let him know what it’s come to. I’ll bring him around. After that, if you still want to call the cops, okay. But I think …” Red took a breath, and she could see him struggling to arrange the words in his head. Sonia had seen trial footage of him in this exact state after his first wife’s death, a man grown fat on life’s cheerful generalities, now laboring hard to find some precision within the depths of his five thousand—dollar suit. “I think taking his kid away from him might be the last straw.”

“What if it’s the wake-up call he needs?” Sonia asked.

“You said people were there for me when I needed it, and you were right. Owen and I have had our differences, but I owe him this much. At least I have to try.”

“I don’t get this. Why are you sticking up for him?”

“If I don’t,” Red said, “nobody will. I guess maybe I know how that feels.”

Sonia felt all remaining argument vacuumed out of her in the form of a silent sigh. An earlier version of her—the individual she’d thought she was before seeing Scott’s car parked outside the McGuire house tonight—might have put up more of a fight, but at this point, she just didn’t have it in her.

Admitting that to herself, though, was harder than she’d anticipated.

And in the end, she just walked away.