I grab my boxes in a daze, tuck them under my arms along with the book, and stumble toward the counter, where Rusty leans, turning the page in a magazine.
“Hi again,” he says as I plunk my purchases down. I’m breathing hard, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “It’s good to see ya, Fern. How ya been?”
“Okay.” My pulse whirs. My wrist itches.
“Yeah?” He scans the boxes and packing tape—beep, beep, beep. I flinch at every sound. “Nice of you to help Ted with his move. Me, I still can’t believe he’s going to Florida. Cedar without Ted Brierley? Uh-uh, can’t picture it. Last week, I was telling him how…” He trails off, staring at me. “Hey. Are you okay?”
My phone chirps with a text in the back pocket of my shorts. I pull it out and read. Eric. How’s it going there, Bird? On a scale of one to Ted, how Ted is Ted today?
“Fern?”
Rusty rubs his hand along his beard. I wince at the scrape of it: coarse skin against coarse hair. I try to concentrate on the round, red-cheeked face of this man I’ve known since I was a kid. He used to give me candy and stickers every time I came into the store.
“I’m just hot,” I finally say. I wipe my arm against my forehead for effect. Smile a little, though my lips feel like rubber.
Rusty nods. He reaches for Astrid’s book without looking at it, then pulls the trigger on the scanner gun to ring it up. “Make sure you’re drinking plenty of water. They say eight glasses a day, but when it’s this humid, I shoot for ten.”
He glances down at the hardcover in his hand and frowns. “Poor girl,” he says. “Or—poor woman. She’s all grown up now.”
“You know her?” I take a step forward and my toes crush against the bottom of the counter.
“Sure,” Rusty says. “I mean—not personally. Just the way everyone knows her.” He shakes his head. “It’s terrible. As if she didn’t go through enough as a kid. But it looks like the same thing’s happening all over again. More than a week and no real leads. Exactly like before. How can that be?”
I swallow, and it’s as if a concrete ball drops into my stomach. I’ve been so caught up with Astrid’s original disappearance that I almost forgot about her current one. Right in this very moment, she’s missing for the second time, while I stand at Rusty’s, sweaty and itchy but safe.
Astrid would be thirty-four now. Surely much stronger than she was at fourteen. Surely capable of fighting back. But drugs. But blindfolds. But basements. There are so many ways to make someone vulnerable. And anyway—trauma doesn’t care how old you are; it makes children of us all.
“The jacket says there’s…” My voice shakes. Rusty looks up from the book. “This girl?” I try to continue. “I guess she was there when Astrid…” His gaze is gentle but feels like a light shined right in my eyes. “And she never came forward?”
“Right,” Rusty says, nodding. “Lily.”
“Who?” I try to take another step forward, but I’m as close to the counter as I can get.
Rusty bags the book and packing tape. “The other girl,” he says. “Lily. Astrid writes about her in the book, and how— Well, I won’t spoil it for you.” He taps a couple buttons on the register, then looks at me expectantly. “How d’ya wanna pay today, kiddo?”
He has to repeat the question two more times before I finally hand him my credit card.
* * *
I’m waiting for Ted outside, my purchases at my feet. The sun beats down, and I’m light-headed and disoriented. Practically panting from all the pivots my brain has made today.
Taking out my phone, I type out a text to Eric: I’m spiraling.
Sometimes it’s enough simply to tell him this. It steadies me to admit it. Slows the marble enough that, on a good day, I can pluck it from the slide.
His response comes quickly, and I imagine him in the hospital break room, having just distracted a sniffling child from shots or pain or fear.
Oh no! he writes. About what?
I can almost picture it: being on a street in Foster, New Hampshire, all lush lawns and tree-lined roads, no cars except one—a gray van, maybe, into which a masked man pulls a fourteen-year-old girl.
I keep feeling like I know something about Astrid Sullivan’s kidnapping. Her memoir talks about there being a witness, and