“Ellen.” Thomas called her name softly, like a question.

Officer Day directed the beam of light around the circumference of the clearing. Nothing. We all stood silent and listened. He swung the light back again slowly, shining it up and down tree trunks, as if somehow we would see her perched up in the branches or down inside the tangle of rhododendron roots.

“She’s not here,” said Thomas. “Jesus Christ, Libby, she’s not here.”

“We need to get the two of you back to the station,” said Officer Day.

“No. This is where she would’ve come. I’m certain. When Sage and I buried stuff, we told her that in an emergency this was the best place to hide.” I knelt at the foot of the red oak and pushed the earth off the board and lifted it. “Can you shine the light here?” I asked. There were cans of beans and Campbell’s cream of chicken soup, a tube of Crest toothpaste, and two rolled-up sleeping bags. There was one missing. Definitely.

“This is your apocalypse survival plan?” Thomas asked.

“She’s been here. I’m positive. The Lone Ranger and Garfield sleeping bags are here, but the Star Wars one is missing. There should be three. No one else knows about this except Sage, and she doesn’t even come here anymore.” The sleeping bags had belonged to Sage’s brothers, and we’d retrieved them from Goodwill bags Charlotte had put in the trunk of the car.

“Are you sure?” asked Thomas.

“Positive. She must’ve gone home. She waited here for us to find her, and when we didn’t come, she went home.”

“There were definitely three?” Thomas was afraid to hope. Marie called him Doubting Thomas, saying it would make him a good scientist, able to question things, to see the possible pitfalls.

“Please,” I said to Officers Day and Schuster, “we have to go back to the house.”

“We left a squad car at the house. They’d call it in if she went there.”

“She’s waiting for us, then. For me and Thomas. She got home and saw the police car in the driveway, and she’s afraid. Please. Can we go there first?”

We would have to cut off the path to get to our house, but it was only a few hundred yards down from the main trail. If Ellen had gone back home, we were already so close to her. Thomas and I nearly ran all the way, the two policemen following. We turned right off the trail, onto the path that led to our house, and both started sprinting, shouting her name. I could see the bathroom light still on, where I had crawled out hours earlier. There was a light on in the kitchen. A police car was in the driveway, its parking lights on.