Sage sat down next to me. And I loved her all over again, infinitely, because she just understood it all without me having to say anything, and she loved me. Grady came over too. He sat on his haunches and took my wrist and felt my pulse. He squeezed my arm.

“They’ll find her, Libby. She’ll be okay. I just wish I had said something from the start. To your mother or someone. It just didn’t sit right with me not to say anything.”

Sage looked at me and shook her head to tell me again that it wasn’t her. I already knew it wasn’t.

For the second time that night, I could see her trying to grasp something, like a picture that comes into focus and then recedes.

“Sage,” I said, “tell Wilson? That Ellen’s gone, and Barbie Man could be looking for him?”

The two officers helped me into the back of the patrol car. “Where’s her brother?” people had started asking. I could hear the murmur of his name: “Thomas Gallagher . . . was here a few minutes ago . . .”

“Did you see where your brother went?” Officer Day asked me.

“No. He was next to me. Maybe he went home to see if she’s there?”

Officer Day told the other cop to call it in, and I listened: Thomas’s name, Ellen’s name, repeated by a voice muffled by static and interference as we made the three-point turn and headed down Horseshoe. Families were still standing on the side of the road, looking in at me sitting in the back of the car as we drove past. I looked back at them, desperate. Tears fell, but it wasn’t like regular crying. I wanted my mom. Please help me. What would he do to Ellen? She should have been at the Gambinos’ tonight, making custard and cakes with Gabriel, wearing aprons. This was all my fault. What would he do to her? I couldn’t think of that, her slight frame and his giant one, him hurting her. I dry-heaved in the back, and Officer Day said, “Pull in, she’s going to be sick.”