V was surprised now. “Daisy? Why on earth do you want to know about her?”

“Because she also disappeared from Hastings,” Nic said. “Ten years ago.”

A loud, boisterous laugh filled the small space wall to wall. “Who told you that?”

V stared now, out the window into the woods. Thinking, maybe, about her sister.

“I did,” Kurt said.

V set her elbows on the table and leaned closer to Nic. She looked her in the eye, hard and without blinking, for a long moment.

“Daisy wasn’t like the rest of us. Plain folk. Making do. I know where all the others are. Some married. Some got kids. Others like me, just working to pay bills. We like living alone after how we grew up. But Daisy, she was a shining star. Smarter than the rest of us. Resourceful. Always fighting to get out. Get more. She used to use a stick to poke through the crack in the cupboard where the chains couldn’t quite pull them together right. She put sticky tape on the end and figured out how to drag boxes of crackers close to that crack. She’d pull out a few. Eat them all herself. Then she’d slide the box back. And she didn’t care when it was time for punishment.”

V shook her head.

“You think our mother didn’t know exactly how many crackers were in each box?”

Nic watched V tell this story of her sister, her mind spinning. There were girls like Daisy Hollander everywhere. Nic knew the type. Scrappy. Resourceful.

“And she finally found a way to leave for good?’ Nic asked.

“Sure did. She told most people she was going to Boston to live with our sister. There were four siblings and my parents still here at the time. I knew she was going to disappear, at least for a while. She didn’t want to get dragged down.”

“So she just never came back? Didn’t you worry about what had happened to her?”

“I know what happened,” V said. “She texted me. She moved to New York. Begged me not to tell her poor boyfriend. That kid nearly lost his mind when she left.”

“But that was ten years ago.”

“Look—some of us are close. Talk every week. Others, a few years go by. Daisy texted once in a while. Stopped altogether a few years ago. But there’s nothing strange about that.”

“And you’re sure they were from her—the messages?”

“I know how she says things. How she talks. Why are you asking this?” V was now concerned. “Do you know something?”

“No—it’s not that. I guess I’m just in that frame of mind, looking for my mother.”