the photo, instead latching on to the painting behind the couch. It’s of a ballerina stretching, her arms taut as she reaches toward her toes. I remember it from Rita’s interview on the news.
“I love that painting,” I say to break the silence. To stall until I figure out how to ask the questions that might fill my memory’s gaps.
Rita glances behind her. “Thanks,” she says. “I’m a dancer. Which I’m sure Astrid’s told you.”
“Right. Yeah.”
Without any warning, a wave of nausea crests inside me. I put my hand to my mouth.
“Are you okay?” Rita asks.
I can’t respond until it passes. I breathe through the spaces between my fingers. Wait for my stomach to settle. I picture the nausea like a mist rolling through me.
“Yes,” I finally say, swallowing the last of it down. “Sorry. It’s just that I’m pregnant.”
I stiffen. It’s the first time I’ve spoken those words out loud.
“Oh, wow,” Rita says. “Congrats.” But there’s a wince in her eyes. She looks as if I’ve pinched her.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Her lips twitch, an almost smile. “Yeah. No, yeah. That’s great. Astrid’s gonna be thrilled for you. We’ve been trying to get pregnant ourselves. But it’s been a struggle. We’ve been through some unsuccessful rounds of IVF.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
She waves away my apology like it’s smoke she’s clearing from the air. “It’s fine. It’ll happen for us. We’ll make sure of it. We can’t wait to have a baby.”
Her optimism feels strange to me—mostly because I don’t understand how anyone could be excited about something so terrifying. Astrid knows how easy it is for a child to be dragged into darkness. So how would she wake each day without a litany of worries looping through her mind? Children who walk away. Children who don’t come back. Children who think they’re just children—not prey.
“So in terms of finding Astrid…” I say.
Rita looks surprised by the switch in subject, but this is why I’m here. To get information. To trigger memories. And I can’t afford to waste more time when I have no idea how much Astrid has left.
“I’ve been thinking about Lily,” I continue.
“Lily from the basement?” Rita says.
I nod. “I keep thinking how—if the police could find her… find Lily… then maybe she could tell them things that would help them locate Astrid. So I guess I’m wondering if Astrid’s told you much about her.”
“Well, yeah,” Rita says, cocking her head to the side. Her eyes narrow at me. I can feel them zooming in. “She never told you?”
I shrug. Try to seem casual as I take another gamble. “She’s not one to bring it up, you know? And I never wanted to ask her about it. I didn’t want to make her relive something so horrible.”
I hold my breath until she responds—“That makes sense,” she says—and then I let it out. Slowly.
“But I have no idea where Lily is,” she adds. “Supposedly, the police tried to find her, back in 2000. I’m not sure how long they looked, but I know they ran a composite sketch against the database of missing children. Nothing came up.”
Of course it didn’t. Because it couldn’t. Because Lily’s parents—my parents—never even reported her as missing; they only spoke to the police after I’d been returned. I rub my hand against an ache along my sternum. My heart is a fist clenching tighter and tighter.
“And then there was Astrid’s therapist,” Rita continues. “She made a statement to the police that she believed Lily was some sort of imaginary friend. She said it was a common coping mechanism for that type of trauma.” She rolls her eyes. “As if Astrid would have an imaginary friend—at fourteen.”
I scratch my wrist—long, deep strokes—and as I glance at my fingers, I remember a line from the memoir. When he brought her down the stairs, Astrid wrote about Lily, she had ropes tied tightly around her wrists.
My hand freezes. That’s the reason for my itch. I’m sure of it. This whole time, I’ve been scratching because I remembered the ropes—only the memory was stored in my skin instead of my mind.
I need to know what else is inside me, what other disguises my memories wear.
“In the memoir…” I start. Rita’s eyes brighten with eagerness.
“Did you read it?” she asks.
“Just the first few chapters,” I say.
“Oh,” Rita says. She looks disappointed. Picking the pillow up from her lap, she clutches it to her chest. Not like someone seeking comfort—but like someone holding a shield.