Yes. Understood. You’re a smart girl. Always were.
I smiled because that was something my father would say.
Where were we when I slipped on some wet rocks and scraped my knee on barnacles?
My dad would remember that fall. I had screamed like I’d been stabbed, even though after we cleaned the wound it wasn’t much of anything at all.
Cranberry Island, Maine.
The response came back as fast as if he’d said it aloud. A tingle shot through my body. I showed Ben the phone and nodded.
Two right.
Three to go.
CHAPTER 29
Glen read the question and wanted to cry.
In the beginning, all he knew were tears. But at some point, he couldn’t say when, the pain, his endless suffering, became less intense as it morphed into a persistent, almost dull ache. The relentless, piercing agony of those initial days, months even, after his disappearance couldn’t have gone on forever. At some point the body and mind had to accept their fate. He had to do what humans had done for eons—adapt to survive. But what Glen was most thankful for was his capacity to endure. Otherwise, he’d have surely gone insane by now. And if he couldn’t do what was asked of him—and much was asked—everyone would suffer.
Glen had to focus for Maggie’s sake, at least until this conversation was over. There’d be plenty of time for tears later. All he had was time.
Who’s my best friend?
Right away, Glen realized this was a trick question, and his pride for Maggie surged with her cleverness. She was thinking someone might have studied her, tried to learn her habits to pull off a ruse. She was right to be cautious. Glen knew better than most that people really did study others that way. So how to answer? He could have put down Laura Abel, or even Benjamin Odell, but he knew neither would have been correct.
He imagined his daughter at school somewhere, because for once he knew the time of day. If he closed his eyes, he could see her blond hair and picture her sweet twelve-year-old smile. Then he realized, no, he had missed her birthday, so she was thirteen now, and the hole in his heart somehow managed to burrow a few inches deeper.
He eventually provided the correct answer to her question: Daisy. Maggie always went around saying Daisy was her best friend in the world.
Glen pictured them in his mind, his family, together as they once had been, before everything changed. He put them in their old house, even though he knew they were living across town now. He might have been absent all these months, going on years, but Glen knew everything about them—every soul-crushing detail.
Maggie’s next question arrived:
What was my favorite Christmas present before we got Daisy?
Before Daisy, who would be five now, Glen calculated. So it would have been a present from at least six Christmases ago. He thought a second, and soon it came to him. He lived his life over and over again in his mind. Memories were all Glen had now, so he collected, stored, and guarded them, like a starving man with dwindling rations. He’d go year by year, day by day if possible, trying to recall specific events, experiences that had once grounded him, but too often those moments were shrouded in the fog of time. Thankfully, this wasn’t one of those moments.
He remembered that Christmas morning quite vividly. Maggie was six at the time, but the way she had cried with delight made it hard to believe something so loud could come from a body so small.
They were gathered in the living room, a fire roaring in the fireplace, with a bright and glittering tree nearby. The scents of pine and gingerbread came to Glen as though he’d been transported back there. Nina, beautiful Nina, hovered behind young Maggie, waiting with nervous anticipation. She had begged for a Barbie DreamHouse for so long, lobbied like she was running a political campaign, the wait had been almost as excruciating for them as it had been for their daughter.
The memory surfaced with an ache both raw and primal. Now having his daughter so close, being connected to her this way, made his pain unbearable. Tears sprang to his eyes as his throat closed up.
Glen gave his answer and once again he was right.
The next question he got right as well. The Family Kettle—that was the name of the restaurant they had vowed never to eat at again because of the terrible food and