“She’s not here,” Thomas says, anxiety squeezing at his chest. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“We’ll send an officer over to your house, Mr. Petit. She’ll fill you in on what we know.”

The line goes dead and Thomas slowly lowers the receiver from his ear. He and Tess have raised Jordyn since she was four, after their oldest son, Randy, came back home and dropped her off. “I can’t deal with her,” Randy said, “and I can’t find her mom.” Then he left. They hear from him only a few times a year by way of a phone call, a postcard or birthday card.

Thomas wanted to tell Randy to stop calling altogether. That the sound of his voice and his letters made Jordyn sad and out of sorts. But Tess told him that barring Randy from Jordyn’s life would be a mistake that Jordyn would hold against them one day. So he held his tongue.

Jordyn is the daughter he and Tess never got the chance to raise. Betsy, their third-born, didn’t live to see her first full year and Tess never quite recovered from the loss. She loved her boys but they weren’t Betsy, and Jordyn reminded them of their daughter.

If Jordyn wasn’t at the Landry house, then where was she? The bar and grill, Thomas thinks. Maybe Jordyn went next door. She spent a lot of time in the office and the restaurant part of the business. Thomas limps to his bedroom and pulls on a pair of jeans from the bureau and a shirt from the closet.

Despite the recent trouble with the local police, the over-the-top drama, the slammed doors, the icy silences that come with a preteen girl, Jordyn has been more joy than trouble over the years. Tess taught her how to make gingerbread and ptichie moloko—birds’ milk cake—and how to knit. She braided her hair and told her about growing up on a farm, the daughter of immigrants from Russia, and stories of Baba Yaga and Kikimora, the House Hag.

For his part, Thomas taught Jordyn about how to run a business. Put her to work sweeping and taking inventory, taught her, much to Tess’s chagrin, how to mix drinks. All alcohol-free, of course.

Thomas pushes through the front door, the newly risen sun momentarily blinding him, the air mild against his face. Holding tightly to the wrought-iron railing, he picks his way down the four concrete steps that lead to the sidewalk. Directly next door is Petit’s. The twin buildings are two stories tall and made of red brick and weeping mortar.

When the boys were small they lived above the bar in the cramped second floor but eventually bought the building next door after Tess complained that the noisy patrons kept the boys up late into the night and filled their ears with crass language and their heads with unsavory ideas.