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“She’s not in there,” I panted, my voice getting frantic now.

Eamon cupped his hands around his mouth. “Annie!” His deep voice carried over the fields, farther than mine could travel. We both stood frozen, listening.

“Where is she?” I studied the road. Had I seen a car pass by? “Eamon, where is she?”

My hand gripped onto his sleeve so tightly that pain pierced through the knuckles of my fingers. I couldn’t feel my heartbeat anymore.

“What about the river?” It was in the distance, beyond the tree line that sat behind the hill.

He shook his head. “She wouldn’t wander that far.”

The entire look of his face had transfigured, a look of pure terror consuming him. We were asking ourselves the same question. Only last night, Caleb Rutherford had broken into our home. He’d threatened me. Us.

Eamon pushed me in the other direction, hand pointing to the northeast corner of the fields. “Start on that side, I’ll go this way.”

I ran, legs driving me forward until I was disappearing into the farthest row of tobacco. “Annie!” My voice cracked as I flew through the fluttering leaves. “Annie!”

The panic sent my thoughts scattering in every direction, but I couldn’t follow them. Eamon’s voice was ringing out in the distance, growing more desperate every time he shouted her name. Each time I heard it, the chill deepened in my blood.

I didn’t slow as I reached the end of the row, and then I was doubling back on the next, eyes searching the field. My throat was raw as I called for her again and again.

“Mama!” A tiny voice found me.

I stopped, catching myself on the stalks before I could stumble forward. I held my breath as I listened. Eamon was still calling out, the sound muffled by the wind. Had I imagined it?

“Mama!”

The pain of hearing that word detonated inside of me, making everything tilt and shift.

I took a step in the direction of the voice, then another.

“Mama! Look!”

I pressed myself between the plants, into the next row, then the next, looking for her. When I spotted her pink dress in the forest of green, a sob broke in my chest. She was so small beneath the height of the tobacco, standing in the center of the row. Her brown eyes were wide with excitement, her hands cupped together in front of her.

“Eamon! She’s here!”

I walked straight toward her, hardly able to stay on my feet. My insides collapsed as my knees hit the dirt in front of her. I hadn’t realized I was crying, hot tears dripping from my chin.

I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into my lap. My face pressed into her hair as I wept.

“Look,” she whispered, her hands opening between us to reveal a ladybug.

It crawled across her palm, the vision of it blurring through my tears.

“I see it,” I rasped, wiping my cheek with the back of my hand.

Eamon burst into the row a second later, chest deflating when he saw us. His face was flushed as he sank down and pulled us both into him, and I curled into Eamon as Annie curled into me. She peered at the ladybug, oblivious to the two minutes of horror we’d just gone through.

I didn’t care that this crossed the line of keeping my distance or confusing boundaries. In that moment, I needed there to be no space between the three of us. I needed to feel us together, with no beginning and no end.

I’d never felt fear like that. Not ever. And I didn’t think there was any way to ever come back from that explosion of light that had birthed a universe inside of me when she said that word.

Mama.

She wasn’t safe with me. She never had been.

I stood in the center of the sitting room in the dark, my eyes pinned to Annie’s sleeping form. She was tucked into her bed, lit by the moonlight coming through the window. Her peaceful face was nuzzled into the quilt, her breaths long and deep.