“Hey, Ted,” Rusty calls from the counter. “Perfect timing. Your order came in this morning. I shelved it only ten minutes ago.” His eyes widen when he notices me lurking at the door. “Hey, kiddo. Good to see ya. How’re things in the big city these days?”
“Don’t distract her,” Ted barks. “She’s on a mission. Here to help me pack.”
“Ah,” Rusty says. “Sorry about that.” He mimes zipping his lips and smiles at me. I smile back weakly and shrug.
Ted turns down the second aisle, where there are phone chargers, boxes of toner, ink cartridges for ancient printer models, and the typewriter ribbon that Rusty stocks just for him. I head to the back of the store, marked “Hardware, Storage, and Books,” and I grab all the flattened boxes I can tuck beneath my arms. Reaching for the rolls of packing tape, I slip them around my wrists like shackles.
In a minute, I make my way toward the register, ready to catch up with Rusty out of Ted’s earshot, but at the end of the aisle, I stop so quickly that one of my boxes drops to the floor.
Astrid is staring at me.
Her red hair flames out from her face. Her green eyes bore into mine. The freckle beneath her eyebrow hooks my gaze and I look at it until it blurs.
Blinking a few times, I wait for my vision to clear. Then I glance at my hand, find it white knuckled, clutching a shelf. I loosen my grip. Steady myself.
Astrid isn’t staring at me. She’s glossy and two-dimensional on a promotional poster taped beside copies of her memoir. The books have been squeezed in to fit among the airport mysteries, shiny romances, and various new releases that Rusty keeps in stock—Brennan Llewellyn’s latest among them. I set the rest of my boxes down, pick up one of Astrid’s hardcovers, run my finger along the slightly raised font of its title: Behind the Red Door. The spine cracks as I open it.
When Astrid Sullivan was fourteen years old, the bolded words on the inside cover read, she went missing for almost a month. Ever since, the truth of what happened to her has been missing, too—until now.
It’s a little heavy-handed, but it chills me all the same, even in this stifling heat. I skim the rest of the book jacket, eyes leaping from phrase to phrase—raised in a strict Catholic household, vacillated between guilt and rebellion—but when I land on one sentence in particular, my heart hammers so hard I can almost hear it.
For the first time, it says, Astrid writes about details and memories previously undisclosed, including the startling revelation that there was a witness to what happened, a young girl who never came forward.
Something jolts in my brain. It’s a jerking sensation I know very well, one that Dr. Lockwood tells me I can’t actually feel, but I do. I do.
Girls who see girls disappear Girls who never speak up.
I grab my boxes in a daze, tuck them under my arms along with the book, and stumble toward the counter, where Rusty leans, turning the page in a magazine.
“Hi again,” he says as I plunk my purchases down. I’m breathing hard, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “It’s good to see ya, Fern. How ya been?”
“Okay.” My pulse whirs. My wrist itches.
“Yeah?” He scans the boxes and packing tape—beep, beep, beep. I flinch at every sound. “Nice of you to help Ted with his move. Me, I still can’t believe he’s going to Florida. Cedar without Ted Brierley? Uh-uh, can’t picture it. Last week, I was telling him how…” He trails off, staring at me. “Hey. Are you okay?”
My phone chirps with a text in the back pocket of my shorts. I pull it out and read. Eric. How’s it going there, Bird? On a scale of one to Ted, how Ted is Ted today?
“Fern?”
Rusty rubs his hand along his beard. I wince at the scrape of it: coarse skin against coarse hair. I try to concentrate on the round, red-cheeked face of this man I’ve known since I was a kid. He used to give me candy and stickers every time I came into the store.
“I’m just hot,” I finally say. I wipe my arm against my forehead for effect. Smile a little, though my lips feel like rubber.
Rusty nods. He reaches for Astrid’s book without looking at it, then pulls the trigger on the scanner gun to ring it up. “Make sure you’re drinking plenty of water. They say eight glasses a day, but when it’s this humid, I shoot for ten.”
He glances down at the hardcover in his hand and frowns. “Poor girl,” he says. “Or—poor woman. She’s all grown up now.”
“You know her?” I take a step forward and my toes crush against the bottom of the counter.
“Sure,” Rusty says. “I mean—not personally. Just the way everyone knows her.” He shakes his head. “It’s terrible. As if she didn’t go through enough as a kid. But it looks like the same thing’s happening all over again. More than a week and no real leads. Exactly like before. How can that be?”
I swallow, and it’s as if a concrete ball drops into my stomach. I’ve been so caught up with Astrid’s original disappearance that I almost forgot about her current one. Right in this very moment, she’s missing for the second time, while I stand at Rusty’s, sweaty and itchy but safe.
Astrid would be thirty-four now. Surely much stronger than she was at fourteen. Surely capable of fighting back. But drugs. But blindfolds. But basements. There are so many ways to make someone vulnerable. And anyway—trauma doesn’t care how old you are; it makes children of us all.
“The jacket says there’s…” My voice shakes. Rusty looks up from the book. “This girl?” I try to continue. “I guess she was there when Astrid…” His gaze is gentle but feels like a light shined right in my eyes. “And she never came forward?”
“Right,” Rusty says, nodding. “Lily.”
“Who?” I try to take another step forward, but I’m as close to the counter as I can get.
Rusty bags the book and packing tape. “The other girl,” he says. “Lily. Astrid writes about her in the book, and how— Well, I won’t spoil it for you.” He taps a couple buttons on the register, then looks at me expectantly. “How d’ya wanna pay today, kiddo?”
He has to repeat the question two more times before I finally hand him my credit card.
* * *
I’m waiting for Ted outside, my purchases at my feet. The sun beats down, and I’m light-headed and disoriented. Practically panting from all the pivots my brain has made today.
Taking out my phone, I type out a text to Eric: I’m spiraling.
Sometimes it’s enough simply to tell him this. It steadies me to admit it. Slows the marble enough that, on a good day, I can pluck it from the slide.
His response comes quickly, and I imagine him in the hospital break room, having just distracted a sniffling child from shots or pain or fear.
Oh no! he writes. About what?
I can almost picture it: being on a street in Foster, New Hampshire, all lush lawns and tree-lined roads, no cars except one—a gray van, maybe, into which a masked man pulls a fourteen-year-old girl.
I keep feeling like I know something about Astrid Sullivan’s kidnapping. Her memoir talks about there being a witness, and I thought for a sec that maybe it was me. But I was wrong, I guess.