They were gone. I was alone in the house. I checked again that all the doors were locked. If Barbie Man was up here looking for the boys that had hurt him, I needed to tell somebody. I took out the phone book, but there was no listing for any McVays on Valley Forge Mountain. The Mountain Directory had a list of families, but my mom kept it with her papers in the locked chest in her bedroom closet. Sometimes, when just Marie and I were home, we picked the lock with a bobby pin. I got one from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and went into her bedroom. Her room was sparse: a queen-size bed, two bureaus and a chair. There was a picture on the bureau of the five of us. Beatrice was only about one. Marie was holding her, and I was standing next to them, looking as if I were the attending nurse, just in case Marie dropped her or something. Beatrice was holding my finger. Looking at it, I thought I would do anything on this earth for her. Thomas, about age nine, was looking off to the side. Ellen was staring straight back at the camera, intensely. I couldn’t remember a photograph where she was smiling. Marie had a joke that Ellen was practiced in the art of scowling. The picture was us. Beatrice holding us together. Marie pragmatic and mothering; Thomas thinking about astrophysics or the universe; me worrying, being vigilant; Ellen angry and looking straight out at things.

I knelt on the floor in front of the wooden chest, spread the bobby pin open, laid the flat side down and turned, slowly applying pressure. The chest latch popped, and I lifted the lid. Inside, all the documents were organized into neat bundles and sectioned into packs by rubber bands. There were photographs and letters and certificates and the Mountain Directory, with the Valley Forge Mountain Association information. I opened it and looked up the McVays. The family was listed. They lived on Paul Lemen Drive. Wilson was an only child, born October 1961. That made him almost twenty. Next to “Phone,” it read “Unlisted.” I put the directory back.