“I wish you’d left it alone,” she says. She takes a step toward me. “But here we are, and I guess we have no choice.”
Her voice is icy. It sounds the way a blade looks when it flashes silver in the light.
As Rita moves closer to me, away from the door, my phone rings in my back pocket.
“Don’t answer that,” she snaps, and her tone freezes me in place.
I know it’s Eric calling. I left him a voice mail on my way up, told him I was heading to Astrid’s and I’d try him again when I left. But there’s no way he’d wait around for me to call him back. He loves me, he’s worried about me, and at least he knows where I was headed.
Women who disappear.
“I have something to show you,” Rita says, and she’s so close to me I can smell her. Her skin has a flowery sourness. Like perfume sprayed over sweat.
She stretches out her arm. She’s going to grab me. But when I close my eyes, I don’t feel her grip. Instead I hear something behind me, and I turn, and step back, and watch as Rita pushes the hutch that holds only a wedding photo. She slides the furniture away so that it blocks the entrance to the stairwell, the kitchen, any other way out.
Women who disappear.
When she steps aside, I look at the section of wall she’s exposed.
There’s a door in it. Just a few feet high. Not far beneath the ballerina painting.
“Okay,” Rita says, and she knocks twice on the wall.
The door pops open, and I see only darkness. And then I see red. Hair like flames in a child’s drawing. Hair so bright I wonder if it’s fire.
The hair moves, and now there’s a forehead, a face. Now there’s an entire body coming out of this hole in the wall. It’s a woman, standing, stretching her limbs, turning her face to the light. I notice her eyes first—green like oak leaves—and then her smattering of freckles. The one that’s darker than the rest, beneath her brow.
“Astrid,” I whisper.
Her eyes study me. They squint a little, even as they fill with tears. “Oh my god,” she says. “Lily.”
She crosses the room in only three strides. Gathers me into an embrace. Holds me so tightly I can barely breathe. And suddenly it isn’t fear that freezes me. It’s shock. Even my mind feels stalled. I can’t process what I’m seeing, what this means. I can only listen to her voice, nearly the same one I heard in my dreams.
“Rita said you claimed to be Lily,” she says, “but I didn’t want to believe it, you’re not the first who— Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re alive.”
She steps back, holds her arms out straight as she continues to clutch my shoulders. “You’re alive,” she says again.
She stares at me like I’m a miracle. But she’s the one who looks holy. Her cheeks are glowing; her hair falls in perfect, angelic curls. My eyes shift up and down to take her in. She’s wearing white shorts, a billowy white blouse—both of which are pristine. No dirt. No rips or tears. No signs that she’s been struggling at all.
“You,” I say, but the word trembles. “You were here? The whole time?”
Even as I ask it, I know it’s an echo of a question I’ve asked before. To a man who stood outside his house all night. Watching me panic. Letting me think he was hurt or dead.
“The whole time!” Astrid confirms.
I register the blast of the AC on my skin. The whole house shakes with it. Or maybe just me.
“That’s—” I start. But I don’t have the word, yet, to describe what I’m realizing she’s done. She faked her disappearance. She wasn’t missing this time at all.
I stare at her freckle, but it doesn’t soothe me right now. Instead, it makes my stomach slosh, my mouth taste sour. I try to take a step away from her, but her grip on me is strong.
“I’m sorry if I’m gawking at you,” she says. “I’m just so thrilled to see you. Here, have a seat. You look a little shaken up.”
She leads me to the couch, where she sits us down. Hooks one arm around me and uses the other to smooth my hair. Separating her fingers, she makes them into a comb, and I remember this feeling. The sensation of being cared for. I close my eyes for a moment. Almost lose myself to