Sarasota. A sudden sense of déjà vu momentarily doubles my vision. Sheriff Kahn just returned from Sarasota. Coincidence?

“Why did you leave?” I blurt out.

“Why not?” Kaycee says, with another laugh. “I always wanted to. Don’t you remember? Mrs. Danforth used to catch me trying to sneak out the windows when I used the bathroom pass. Even in third grade, I always wanted out of there.”

I had forgotten Mrs. Danforth, and how Kaycee used to try to shimmy out the windows next to the gym during the school day since the doors were manned by a rotating list of hall monitors. Sometimes she even made it.

I fumble to punch the window down, but still I can’t get enough air. It’s her. It has to be her. Kaycee ran, like everyone said, and I’m wrong, and probably going crazy. Kaycee is alive, sun-kissed, still beautiful; Kaycee is lounging on a patio or sitting by a pool somewhere south of Sarasota. There was no deeper meaning to any of it. She just left. She shook off Barrens like a sweep of dust. She never looked back.

And in this, too, she proved she was better than me.

“Who told you I was looking for you?” I ask, through the leaden feeling in my chest.

“Misha,” she answers, after a pause.

“She told me she never spoke to you,” I say.

“I asked her to lie.” Kaycee says this casually, easily, as if it should be obvious. “I didn’t want my dad knowing where I was, or bugging her to give me messages, or asking me for money, or any of that.”

A stupidly easy answer that never even occurred to me. Of course Kaycee wouldn’t have wanted her dad to have any way of tracking her—he was half the reason she was running in the first place.

Easy arithmetic. So why do I feel that she’s the one lying?

“So you had questions for me?” Kaycee asks.

“I just wanted to understand why,” I say. “Why you lied about being sick. Why you ran off without a word.”

Kaycee sighs. Behind her, a man’s voice is barely audible. I imagine her tilting her head away from the phone, to listen for a husband or boyfriend calling her inside.

Or, maybe, to listen for instructions.

The idea comes to me suddenly, impossible to dislodge.

“Look.” Kaycee presses her mouth up close to the receiver. “I don’t remember why I did any of it, okay? That’s the truth. It was a long time ago. I was screwed up. I wanted attention. Maybe I thought there was money in it.”

She might as well be reading from a book: All the Reasons Kaycee Mitchell Might Have Run Away.

“I’m sorry,” she says, a little quieter, and the whole world goes white for a moment. “I’m sorry for everyone I hurt and all the people who wasted their time looking for me. I’m sorry for you, Abby.”

“Don’t be.” Alarms are blaring in my head.