“There are worse things than silence,” Ted says. His voice is quiet but coarse. The way it gets when he thinks about his father. “And anyway—” His gaze sharpens. “What would you know about normal? Mara and me, we’re all you’ve had for parents. And you’ve never been one yourself.”
I open my mouth to argue. But he’s right.
All I’ve ever known for parents are him and Mara. And Kyla’s, of course. And Eric’s. But even after all my sit-down, table-set dinners with other people’s families, which I participated in with the wonder of a person visiting a museum, I haven’t known Kyla’s and Eric’s parents the way I’ve known my own—in that bone-deep, bone-aching way. Even when Ted and Mara are mysteries to me, their patterns and choices are profoundly familiar. It’s why I’m so good at recognizing when a kid at school has nothing in his belly. It’s why I know how to speak to the parents. How to keep them unguarded. How to convince them it’s not their fault.
I haven’t been a parent yet. But I’m going to be. Right now, the heat is flaring in this studio, because in nine months, there’ll be a baby whose only option for a mother is me. A woman who wasn’t raised to speak the language of normal.
My stomach roils. The baby is tiny. Can’t be much larger than a seed. But still—it’s rioting inside me. Wanting two parents, instead of just one, who will know enough to raise it right. To keep it safe.
“I have to go,” I tell Ted.
“What?” he says as I head for the door. “We’re nowhere close to done here.”
The heat outside is thick. I wade through it to get to the house, then clomp through the door, up the stairs, into my room. I’m about to dive onto the bed, curl into myself—but there she is again. Astrid. Her book is on the floor now, right where it landed when I kicked it off the foot of the bed last night. When I pick it up, I open to the inside jacket of the back cover, stare at the face I should have remembered long before this.
That freckle again. Under her eyebrow. It means something to me, but whatever it is, it’s still out of reach. My memories feel miles away—even with everything I’ve managed to recall: the man’s outfit, Astrid’s pleading, her voice in my dream. But if she wasn’t asking me to save her, if both of us were stuck in that basement together—no, no if anymore; we were—then what was she pleading for?
I skim her bio on the back flap. She’s a middle-school English teacher. We both spend our days in schools. We surround ourselves with children who need us to see them safely through their lives. I protect them with counseling and regulations, and I imagine she builds a home for them with words. Is this why I was drawn to social work in the first place? Because some part of me knew that deep inside me, so far down I couldn’t even hear her calling out, was a girl who’d needed protection, but who’d been left alone instead?
“Is that the book?”
Ted’s standing in the doorway, but I give him barely a glimpse.
“I can see you’re upset,” he says. “But I’m wondering—you said you’ve remembered a man. What did he look like? I think the Sullivan girl said she never saw his face, but do you remem—”
“Ted. Stop.”
“Stop? Fern, this is important. Anything you remember could—”
“Could help the police find Astrid now. But that’s not why you want to know this. Is it?”
I meet his eyes for a moment. A moment in which he looks frustrated and confused but not at all concerned.
“Well, of course we can pass this on to the police if you want,” he says, “but I also think—now, I know I haven’t talked much about my current project with you, but this revelation you’ve had, these memories—they’d fit in perfectly. Maybe, through a series of careful interviews, I could help you remember more. I was actually starting to get stuck last night, but this opens up a whole new window.”
I drop my eyes from Ted’s face. Look back at Astrid’s bio. English teacher. Lives in Maine—with her wife, Rita.
Rita Diaz. I’ve seen her twice on the news. With her dark hair and dark eyes, her gaze both pained and hollow. Missing the same person I might be able to help. If only