She watched the three dots appear, then disappear. Appear. Disappear. He was typing, erasing, typing—trying to find the right string of words to keep her on the hook.

Your Daddy Ditched Me Again, she thought. And for the first time, the sentence didn't end with a question mark. It ended with a period.

Lena turned off the phone.

Lena stared at the lie. She’d already seen his location share flicker on for thirty seconds by accident. He wasn’t in Rawlins. He was in a Holiday Inn two exits west of here, the one with the indoor pool Eli had been begging to visit.

For the first time in six years, she wasn't searching for anything. She was just sitting in the quiet, her son breathing softly behind her, the snow erasing every road behind her.