The sound knocks against my brain. A steel fist. I’m about to leave when Ted adds, “But didn’t you go there with Kyla Kelley?”
“With Kyla?” I have no idea what he’s talking about. He clacks through my confusion. And then, suddenly, I see it: her family’s vacation rental, that summer on Edgewood Lake. Not in Foster, but—what town was that? The name eludes me for a second, until I remember a line from the Wikipedia page I read last night. Something like: Sullivan first gained national attention at fourteen when she was abducted from her neighborhood in Foster, New Hampshire, a small town right outside Fall View. That’s where Edgewood Lake is, I remember now, but the name didn’t even faze me yesterday. Edgewood Lake is such a popular vacation spot that I never really think of it as belonging to a town.
“Why are you bringing up Foster?” Ted asks.
But I’m too embedded in the memory to answer.
It was the first family vacation I’d ever been on—even if the family wasn’t my own—and I remember watching someone’s fireworks from the deck of the house Kyla’s parents had rented for the week. The fireworks were early, well before the Fourth. “It’s only June goddamn twenty-second!” an elderly neighbor complained, and for the rest of that week, Kyla and I echoed the woman’s indignant, high-pitched protest, laughing until we had to wipe our eyes. But that night, my laughter dried up quickly when I noticed Cooper lurking in the corner of the deck. I edged closer to Kyla, burying my face in her abundant blond hair. Right then, it was the longest it had ever been, all the way down to her hips. I remember we measured it before she got it cut, on that very vacation.
Later, Kyla entered eighth grade with hair that was short and spunky, which means—I inhale sharply—I was at Edgewood Lake, in Fall View, right next to Foster, when I was twelve. The same summer, the same week (“June goddamn twenty-second”) when Astrid was kidnapped on the twenty-fourth.
Something squeezes my stomach, wrings it out like a wet cloth, and I lurch out of the study, toward the bathroom, my Thai food pushing up my esophagus until—I reach the toilet just in time, vomit hard into its bowl. I heave again. And again. And again. And then, forehead sweaty, abs sore, I lean against the wall. Pant on the floor.
Ted slips around the corner to stand in the doorway. He looks me over, rumpled hair and dirty toes, knobby knees and the hollows of my collarbones. “That’s the second time today,” he says, chuckling. “What are you, pregnant?”
I can feel my eyes bulge, almost cartoonish. But I recover, quickly, as Ted watches me. Somehow, I stand up, even though my legs feel boneless. I flush the toilet and wash my hands. Rinse out my mouth. Splash water onto my face. As I brush past him, I don’t look at him, just toss a “No, I’m not” over my shoulder before entering my room and closing the door.
I crawl into bed, get under sheets that are damp with my sweat, and burrow as far as I can. Despite the heat that feels like a wool sweater. Despite the loud, clunking fan that does nothing. I try to focus on Astrid: Astrid, who might be back in a basement she thought she escaped; Astrid, whose therapist claimed the witness was a “coping mechanism” that gave her hope; Astrid, who I definitely had the opportunity to meet, to know.
That’s what this is. I’m sure of it. I’m only sick because of everything whirling inside me. The confusion. The dredged-up memories.
The memories I’ve yet to find.
* * *
I wake with nausea so strong I start retching in bed. I make it to the trash can in the corner of the room, see that it’s lined with crumpled papers, and now it’s lined with my puke. My mouth tastes like sour Thai, the air smells like rancid molasses, and I will never eat drunken noodles again.
The blue light coming through the window tells me it must be dawn. The clock on my nightstand confirms it. I rest my head against a bookshelf filled with Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables. I inherited those books from Kyla when she outgrew each series. Me, I was never too old for comfort.
I heave again, rock toward the trash can, and only bile comes out. My hand shakes as I reach