as the paper it was printed on. Just jump scares, Fern! Jump scares. For God’s sake, he used to have ideas; he used to stalk people on the streets!”
Now, Ted turns the car sharply onto Main Street, and I put my hand against the door to brace myself. A stretch of buildings comes into view—the old Victorian repurposed as a post office; the two-room brick library, with an “Under Reconstruction” sign that’s been posted out front since I was seventeen; The Diner, which serves the best corned beef sandwiches; and, finally, Rusty’s Got Everything.
Ted whips into a space in front of the store, parallel parking with a confidence I can’t imagine having. When he taps the bumper of the car in front of him, he huffs “Serves ’em right” before reversing a couple inches and cutting the engine. He runs a hand through his wispy gray hair, messing it up rather than smoothing it out. Ted loves to look frazzled and unkempt, as if you’ve interrupted him during the middle of a work binge.
When I step out of the car, I’m blasted with a heat so potent it feels like a sauna. I didn’t register how hot it was when I first got to Ted’s; I probably thought the sweat that sprang to my forehead was from the woods, the vomit, the flashes of Astrid. Inside the store, it isn’t much better. Rusty’s got five giant fans going, one at the end of each aisle, but the air feels like bathwater. All these years and he’s never invested in AC. Nothing in Cedar ever changes.
“Hey, Ted,” Rusty calls from the counter. “Perfect timing. Your order came in this morning. I shelved it only ten minutes ago.” His eyes widen when he notices me lurking at the door. “Hey, kiddo. Good to see ya. How’re things in the big city these days?”
“Don’t distract her,” Ted barks. “She’s on a mission. Here to help me pack.”
“Ah,” Rusty says. “Sorry about that.” He mimes zipping his lips and smiles at me. I smile back weakly and shrug.
Ted turns down the second aisle, where there are phone chargers, boxes of toner, ink cartridges for ancient printer models, and the typewriter ribbon that Rusty stocks just for him. I head to the back of the store, marked “Hardware, Storage, and Books,” and I grab all the flattened boxes I can tuck beneath my arms. Reaching for the rolls of packing tape, I slip them around my wrists like shackles.
In a minute, I make my way toward the register, ready to catch up with Rusty out of Ted’s earshot, but at the end of the aisle, I stop so quickly that one of my boxes drops to the floor.
Astrid is staring at me.
Her red hair flames out from her face. Her green eyes bore into mine. The freckle beneath her eyebrow hooks my gaze and I look at it until it blurs.
Blinking a few times, I wait for my vision to clear. Then I glance at my hand, find it white knuckled, clutching a shelf. I loosen my grip. Steady myself.
Astrid isn’t staring at me. She’s glossy and two-dimensional on a promotional poster taped beside copies of her memoir. The books have been squeezed in to fit among the airport mysteries, shiny romances, and various new releases that Rusty keeps in stock—Brennan Llewellyn’s latest among them. I set the rest of my boxes down, pick up one of Astrid’s hardcovers, run my finger along the slightly raised font of its title: Behind the Red Door. The spine cracks as I open it.
When Astrid Sullivan was fourteen years old, the bolded words on the inside cover read, she went missing for almost a month. Ever since, the truth of what happened to her has been missing, too—until now.
It’s a little heavy-handed, but it chills me all the same, even in this stifling heat. I skim the rest of the book jacket, eyes leaping from phrase to phrase—raised in a strict Catholic household, vacillated between guilt and rebellion—but when I land on one sentence in particular, my heart hammers so hard I can almost hear it.
For the first time, it says, Astrid writes about details and memories previously undisclosed, including the startling revelation that there was a witness to what happened, a young girl who never came forward.
Something jolts in my brain. It’s a jerking sensation I know very well, one that Dr. Lockwood tells me I can’t actually feel, but I do. I do.