As she lay in the bed now with her pounding head, she muscled back the craving, the hunger of the hollow spaces, and let herself go down the path that she had to consider. If her mother hadn’t walked away, and two weeks had now passed, she was likely dead. Dead in a field that they didn’t search. Or dead at the hand of a stranger.

Maybe that’s why her father was so eager to believe the note was real. Maybe he couldn’t bear to lose her this other way. It would be hard to hold another woman with this thought in his head.

Vodka . . . the bar across the street . . .

Nic grabbed her phone to check the time. Fuck. It was just past four. The bar closed at two.

There was a red dot above her email. A message from her father. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

The email had an attachment, a document that included clips of things her mother had written in her correspondence. He had been the one to read through them when she first disappeared. Her password was stored on the keychain of a computer they shared.

The message now said only FYI—thought you should know.

A new hour followed, then another, reading her mother’s words, but then going into the account herself and reading them firsthand and for the first time. Every word her mother had written going back in time, month by month.

Most of it was insubstantial. Small talk, planning for lunch dates and holiday gatherings. But some of it was more than that. Like after the days she had sessions with her shrink or meetings with her grief support group. Those people had a way of teasing things out of her, keeping her immersed in her self-analysis. Lost in the past. Drowning in it. Filling up her own box of therapy shit.

You have to feel it all before it goes away. They said this repeatedly—Nic knew firsthand because her counselor had said it to her.

But does it? Does it ever go away? her mother had asked. One of them had given an honest reply. It goes away enough.

She wrote things about Annie, and the depth of her grief. The depth of her torturous guilt. Then about her husband and the extent of her love but also her inability to embrace that love. She felt unworthy. I killed his child, our child. I can’t stand for him to hold me . . . I would sooner he punch me in the face.

Nic had to read that twice.

Then there were things about Nic and her behavior. They had all given it a name—survivor’s guilt, they called it. She can’t enjoy her life because it feels wrong. Her mother was terrified about the path she was on.