“She was real then,” Natasha says.

Quincy doesn’t seem to hear her. Plows through the question.

“I took off. I ran back the way I’d come, past stacks of vanilla fudge in yellow boxes, and took a hard left into the sours aisle. This was typically where Grandpa would be. He had one sweet tooth and one sweet tooth only: sour. But he wasn’t there. Nobody was. And I took a left, got lost again, found myself amongst the Peeps. You know what? That store music, or any music like it, still makes me nervous to this day.”

Quincy takes a gulp. Plows ahead.

“I took another left. And another. And another. And I came to that blue rabbit again. Seven feet tall at the shortest. That belly, those wrists, those ankles, and that fleshy neck. In those days, children didn’t have the same variety of entertainments you grew up with. If there was one game I knew, it was Hide-and-Seek. And I sure as hell knew when someone was hiding.”

“From who?”

“How could I have known? But I know now. I remember, Nat.” She laughs. Almost angrily. Almost relieved too. “This is what I meant when I said I hadn’t tied the two stories together. And you’re going to think me terrible for not doing it sooner. But news didn’t travel like it does today. These days, I’d shout for help. But then? How could I have known a seven-foot woman in a jean jacket had been spotted breaking into a house where a newborn slept soundly? How could I have known the Samhattan Police were actively looking for the very woman I saw hiding in a blue bunny suit in the darkest corner of the candy store? And that’s not the worst of it. Because your great-grandfather called to me then. Quincy! He said. Where the hell did you go? And as I opened my mouth to holler back, the rabbit moved. It raised those blue paws toward me and I froze.”

“Fuck, Mom.”

“You gotta understand. The woman on the news. Daphne, yes. And the woman in the store. I just didn’t think…I ran. Again. I took a left instead of a right and a right instead of a left and I was sweating and I was close to tears, and God as my witness, Nat, I ran into another little girl, lost in the rows of candy. She was my age, I remember that. I asked her how we get to the front of the store, but she didn’t know. We both stood up on our tiptoes but couldn’t see over the shelves. I’m gonna go that way, I said. You wanna follow me? She didn’t. I told her good luck, she went her way, and I went mine. I wouldn’t see her face again until I saw it on the Samhattan Nightly News.”

“Fuck. Mom!”

“Same hair, same look in her eye, as if she’d had her school picture taken the very day I’d seen her. MISSING, they said. Brea Delany. Last seen entering Sandy’s Candy Store. And whether or not I thought to connect the two, the person in the rabbit suit, those paws coming at me, with the girl I had seen, the girl gone missing, whether or not I tied it all together then, I sure as shit haven’t done so since. In fact, I’ve thought of Sandy’s Candy a hundred times, and a hundred times I’ve felt queasy with the memory of those small rows, those tall shelves, the shadows in the corner of the store. But not once have I thought I was somehow witness to something as horrible as I now realize I was. And not once did I think of the woman Daphne breathing inside that suit.”