For the first few weeks I’d been restless. I looked around for him at school, but I never saw him there. I risked my own humiliation by approaching his friends to see if they knew where he was, but they’d scowled at my proximity and told me they hadn’t seen him, either. So, I’d hustled over to the police station, and I’d tried to explain to a chubby police detective that my brother was missing. The man—Jeffrey Stromer—had the audacity to roll his eyes. He’d said, “You Bells always seem to have someone missing.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, but when he flipped open a box of jelly doughnuts and started eating them in front of me while I was still talking, I decided he was the most useless detective in the world. After I left, I tried not to think about how much his words stung. Yes. We were a family who had started as five, but who would always have someone missing. Then, for a while it was two someones. Now, it was three.

So, in September, when I saw a boy with shaggy, blond hair and a tacky guns-crossing neck tattoo at the end of the junk food aisle in the grocery store, I felt a fireworks show of emotions: relief, worry, confusion, anger.

Winston had a new girlfriend—she hung off his arm with half-closed eyes and I tried not to cringe at how they both teetered. Winston stared blankly at the chip options for a solid two minutes before he came to his senses and grabbed one.

I thought about approaching him. I imagined confronting him for bailing on us at Christmas, and for never coming back. Because for someone who spent so much of his childhood angry about how our father had left us, I wanted to point out that he’d done the exact same thing.

I’d abandoned my half-filled shopping cart, left the grocery store, and drove back to Syliva’s in silence.

That was the moment I realized I’d lost Winston for good.

I sipped a steaming mug of hot chocolate at the breakfast table as I scanned the Pebble Paper: Prince Forrester and Lady Holly Kissing had an upcoming engagement party, Prince Driar was coming to the end of his research trip in Polar Territory, the Crimson Queen was extending her vacation, again. Zane found me when I was halfway through the last page.

A glass plate piled with my favourite chocolates—smooth mint, white-vanilla-stuffed frosting, butternut crunch—slid out in front of me, pulling my attention from the paper.

When I glanced up, Zane was folding his arms.

“What’s this?” I nudged the plate, trying not to get too excited about the butternut crunch candies.

“It’s a bribe, Trite.”

Suddenly the butternut seemed less thrilling. “A bribe for what?”