“Then where are they, Dan?” Juliette shrieked.

“Cars don’t just lose their keys.”

“We are trapped here.”

Sarah sat down on the bottom step, her head in her hands.

“This is a nightmare,” she muttered.

“The kids are going to start crying soon.”

“They’re hot, and they’re hungry.”

“Tell them to get their things anyway,” Juliette said, her voice brittle.

“We will walk to the main road.”

“We will call a cab.”

“From here?” I asked, my voice calm and even.

“The nearest town is twelve miles away.”

“There are no cabs out here, Juliette.”

“The cell service is barely enough to load a text message.”

Juliette glared at me, her lips pressing into a thin, purple line.

“Then we will walk,” she said.

But she didn’t move.

She looked at her expensive leather sandals, then out at the gravel path that led to the dirt road.

The midday sun was brutal, baking the clay soil until it cracked.

The air outside was thick with humidity and the sound of cicadas.

“You’re not walking twelve miles in those shoes, Mom,” Sarah said.