“Hello, dear.” She always calls me dear, even though I don’t believe I’ve ever been that to her. “I only have a minute, but I’m calling to—”
“Did I know Astrid Sullivan?”
I don’t care why Mara called. She hardly ever does, but right now, her timing is perfect.
There’s a pause before a rush of laughter. “What?”
“Did I know Astrid Sullivan?” I repeat.
Another pause. “Who’s Astrid Sullivan?”
“You’ve never heard of her?”
“No, I haven’t,” she says. “Is she a celebrity or something? You know I don’t care much for—”
“She’s not a celebrity,” I cut in. “Well, she’s famous, I guess, but I’d never heard of her either. Or at least I thought I hadn’t. She’s this girl who was kidnapped twenty years ago. When she was fourteen. She had red hair, and she was from New Hamp—”
“Fern, what’s going on? Is this a joke?”
“No, I’m—it’s serious. I saw her on the news, and I’ve been having these dreams and I just had a flash that…” I trail off. Try to start over. “She had red hair. A couple years older than me. Are you sure you don’t remember me knowing a girl like that?”
Mara sighs, long and slow against my ear. “I can’t speak to every person you knew, dear, but as far as I know, the only girl you hung around with was Kyla Kelley. Of course, I was very busy when you were a child. How am I supposed to know who you spent your time with?”
In the pause stretching out between us, I almost chuckle. Why did I bother asking her at all? Mara was never the type of mother to take an interest in her daughter’s acquaintances. Or even her whereabouts.
“You seem very agitated,” Mara says. “Have you been taking your meds?”
“Yes, I—” I have a brief moment of alarm where I can’t remember if I packed my pills this morning, but then I pick up my purse from the passenger seat, hear them rattling inside.
“Yes,” I repeat. “My doctor put me on a new prescription, though. My old one wasn’t working.”
Mara chuckles. “Sounds like this one’s not doing too great, either.”
I’m about to shrug the comment aside, but then I stop. Could that be what this is, a side effect of my change in medication? Is my brain just mixing its signals, firing off incorrect messages as it adjusts to the new chemicals? My panic softens at the thought. In a few moments, my breath comes more gently. Because, if I’m honest, my brain has always done this. It’s the reason I went on medication in the first place. I’m always leaping from ordinary sights to sinister assumptions. I see a construction worker descending through a manhole and I’m sure there’ll be an explosion that traps him underground. I see a woman pedaling in the bike lane and I’m positive a bus will hit her.
Eric says I’m an unreliable narrator, especially when it comes to my own life. I get a mosquito bite, and I’m convinced I have West Nile. I cough two times and I’m certain it’s bronchitis. I spiral. I get stuck in all the wrong grooves. I see something as innocent as a father pulling his daughter toward safety, and I flash to a disembodied arm snatching a girl away.
“So is it my turn now?” Mara asks. “Can I get to the reason I called?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure. Sorry.”
I check my mirrors and pull back onto the road. I don’t see Astrid anywhere.
“Ted tells me you’re headed there to help him pack,” Mara says. “Because apparently he’s become a cliché overnight. Moving to Florida… How conventional.”
She groans, and in the background, I hear someone announce that a Bikram yoga class will start in ten minutes.
“Are you on one of your cruises?” I ask.
Mara’s been obsessed with spiritual cruises for years. She and Ted separated when I was in high school, and ever since, she’s been tetherless. Where once she couldn’t stand leaving her studio for more than a few hours at a time, now she hops from ship to ship, living off a steady diet of qigong exercises, psychic readings, and daily Reiki.
“Yes, I have my yoga soon, so I have to hurry this along,” Mara says. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“Okay…”
“As it turns out, Ted’s being a bit of a copycat with his move. My spiritual adviser has been urging me to make a move myself. Find a different studio space. ‘A steadier place to land,’ she calls it.