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I call again, and this time, a voice answers, buttery-smooth and infuriatingly calm. “Hey, Adrien.”

“Quillan,” I snarl.

20

Kamden

My eyes open slowly to a room washed in pale morning light, and for one soft, comfortable moment I don’t understand what woke me. I’m warm beneath Daddy’s blankets, my face buried halfway into his pillow, pacifier still between my lips, Bear squashed beneath one arm, and Rabbit has somehow migrated down near my stomach during the night.

Then I reach across the mattress, finding the spot beside me cold and empty. That wakes me up real quick.

The pacifier falls from my mouth.

“Daddy?”

Silence answers, thick and absolute.

The word is barely out before my chest seizes with an old, familiar terror—the kind that doesn’t bother asking permission before it floods every hollow and empty place inside me, icy and immediate.

Gone.

He left.

Something happened.

He changed his mind.

He—

A rectangle of white paper on the nightstand stops me.

I stare at it, holding my breath.

My name is written across the top in Adrien’s unmistakably severe handwriting.

Kammie,

Daddy had to take care of another errand. I didn’t want to wake you because you need the sleep. Breakfast is in the fridge. Eat it. There’s lunch too if I’m not home by then. Keep your phone with you. I’ll be back as soon as I’m finished.

Be good for me.

—Daddy

I read the note three times, then a fourth.

The panic drains slowly rather than disappearing, leaving behind the shaky feeling that always follows whenever my body realizes it sounded an alarm for something that isn’t happening anymore.

He didn’t disappear.

He told me where he went.

Sort of.

He left food in the fridge.

He left the phone on the charger.

He said he is coming back.