Chapter 4: Pickup

"Don't let her take him," I said. "I'm coming."

"Mrs. Ruggeri, she's very..."

"I know who she is. Keep him in his classroom."

I was down the stairs before I hung up.

The bodyguard was in the front hall, eating a sandwich over a napkin.

"Car," I said. "Now. The preschool."

He looked at my face and dropped the sandwich.

He drove.

I called Valerio twice. Voicemail both times.

I called Paola.

"She's where?" Paola said. "I'm twenty minutes out. Don't let that woman touch him."

"I wasn't planning to."

The preschool was a brick building on a hill, with paper flowers taped to the windows.

It was pickup time for the half-day kids.

The lobby was full of parents in yoga pants and work coats, holding lunch bags and car keys.

In the middle of them stood a small woman in a black dress.

Silver hair in a tight bun. A gold crucifix on her chest. Reading glasses on a chain.

Two men in dark coats waited by the door behind her.

The director hovered near the front desk, pale.

The woman turned when I came in.

She looked at me from my shoes to my hair. She took her time.

"So," she said. "You're the wife."

"Josephine Whitsett," I said. "Tito's stepmother. And you're Mrs. Gatti."

"I am his grandmother. I don't need a name for that." She turned to the director. "Bring the boy."

"Tito stays in his classroom until his father or I take him," I said. "I'm on the list. You're not."

The parents had gone quiet.

A dad by the cubbies stopped zipping his son's jacket.

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