After the downtown were strips of houses on small lots of land—ranches, capes, colonials, in various states of disrepair. A scarce few seemed cared for, but in a way that evoked desperation, a last, futile breath. Flower baskets hanging on a broken porch.

Then came the station and town hall. After that, Hasting Pass continued to the river, with dirt roads on either side leading into the woods where there would be bleaker dwellings, deeper poverty.

The gray sky added to the grimness, an exclamation point on the despair. Nic remembered now, how it crept inside.

They had never gone down Hastings Pass before the disappearance. Her mother said it made her uneasy. The few times Nic had gone with her to visit Evan, they had not even stopped at the gas station.

And now Nic knew everything about this town they had always driven past. Hastings was built to support a chemical company in the 1950s. The company used the river to dispose of its waste. No one knew any better. Or no one gave a shit. A pharmaceutical manufacturer eventually took its place and sustained the town until the recession pulled it under. And then the dominoes fell.

Towns like this were littered all the way up the Housatonic River, into New York State, up to the Canadian border—left abandoned like a jilted first wife, trying to take care of its children with whatever resources it could find. Farming, mostly. And then unemployment and government jobs. Cops, clerks, construction workers.

Nic pulled into the small gravel lot at the police station and parked her mother’s car. She looked in the rearview mirror out of nothing more than habit, really. Her hair was in a ponytail and she’d stopped wearing makeup years ago. There wasn’t much to see, or to check, or to fix.

Not that she would bother if there was.

She closed the mirror, irritated with this relic from her former life.

She left the car and walked inside.

The department consisted of four people—a secretary, a chief, and two uniformed officers. The state provided troopers when additional resources were required, like the night of the storm. Like her mother’s disappearance.

Inside, the secretary, Mrs. Urbansky, was at a desk behind a tall counter.

“Nicole!”

She got up and lumbered her large girth around the metal corners. She reached her hands over the counter and grabbed Nic by the shoulders.

“Nicole,” she said again, her face contorting with sympathy. “How are you? How was the drive?”

Mrs. Urbansky had been nothing but kind to her during the search for her mother. It hadn’t been easy to let it in then. And it wasn’t now.

“Fine,” Nic answered.

Mrs. Urbansky let up on her hold and crossed her elbows on the counter. The soft flesh of her arms bulged out from the creases as she rested her chin on her knuckles.

“So, you think you have a new lead?”