The floor is sharp as it ever was. All these shattered, jagged pieces. But there’s no woman crouched among them. No face turning to mine after all this time. No eyes widening as she recognizes the girl I was in the person I am now.
She isn’t here to see that I came back for her. That my mind tried to bury her, but I dug through everything, even the packed soil of my own fear, to find her.
I slump to the floor. Lay my cheek against a fragment that jabs against bone.
Women who disappear. Women who can’t be found.
“I don’t have her, Fern,” Ted says.
And the fragment is wet now. And I’m just another piece that Mara can glue down.
twenty-two
Now I know why the woods have always haunted me. It was my body’s way of remembering what my mind could not. As I pass them, my stomach whirls once again—but is the nausea from fear, or knowledge? For someone like me, is there any difference between the two?
I grabbed my phone from my room and left my parents. Ted and Mara stood in the open doorway of the studio, and I felt their eyes on me—curious, but not too concerned—as I got behind the wheel. Seems like half this trip to Cedar has been me speeding down the driveway. I wonder when my leaving will stick. Even this time, I’ll have to return for my things.
But first, I have to help Astrid. The trees are rushing by, and as soon as I get a signal on my phone, I’m going to call the police. Ted has her—I know he does; who else could it possibly be?—and the cops will have to take him in, question him until he breaks. It probably won’t take much. He is crazy enough—and I mean that word, crazy, even though I work in a field where we do not use it lightly—to want to boast about his Experiment, if only allowed an audience.
The woods darken this road on an otherwise sunny day, and my phone still says No Service. Maybe I should have used the landline. But then I would have had to stay longer, and I don’t believe I can ever share space with them again.
I press harder on the gas, and in a couple minutes, the trees thin out. When I pass some houses and a gas station, I know I’ve made it. I’m about to command my Bluetooth to call 911, but then I think of someone who needs to hear from me first.
“Call Rita,” I say. She answers on the second ring.
“Rita, this is Fern, please don’t hang up.”
“This is who?”
“Fern Doug—oh. We met the other day. You thought I was Sarah, but don’t hang up—please—I know who has Astrid and I’m gonna call the police. I just want you to know it’s gonna be okay. We’re going to find her.”
I wait through her stunned silence. “What?” she finally says.
“I know who took her twenty years ago. And I know he has her now, too, but I don’t know where. I’m about to call the police, I just thought you should know, first, that everything’s gonna be all right.”
“No,” Rita says, and her voice is thick and warbling. “Please, you can’t call the police.”
I squint at the road ahead. “Why not?”
“Because. I can’t… Just. Don’t do that. Please. Come here immediately, and whatever you do, don’t call them. Things will be so much worse for Astrid if you do.”
My heart ticks faster. “What are you talking about?”
“I can’t say it, they could—”
There’s a pause. It stretches on for a few seconds, and my chest throbs. “Rita, what’s going on?”
“You have to trust me,” she says. “Can you come here? Right now? Please.”
“Yes,” I say, and I’m already jabbing at my GPS, pulling up a previous destination. “Yes, I’m on my way.”
* * *
The front door opens before I’m out of my car. Rita pokes her head out, scans up and down the street, then waves me inside. She’s rattled, her eyes skittering back and forth like an animal looking for predators. I rush past her, into the house, and hear the door shut behind me. The dead bolt clicks like the cocking of a gun.
When I turn toward her, I almost jump. Her panic is gone, as if she wiped it off her face as soon as she closed the door. Now there’s a cool hardness to her features, and a flicker at the corner of