“That commune, that’s how I lost my daughter. Cady is obsessed with finding out what made Jenny take part or who she might have been dating, but I don’t want those old scars cut open.”

“I’m not looking for your daughter’s lover,” I said, although I wondered if it would cross Cady’s mind to try to hire me and what I would say if she did. “Emerald Ferring set out on a road trip two weeks ago. She went to Fort Riley, where her father was stationed during the war, and she told people there she was coming to Lawrence. So far I haven’t found anyone who’s seen her here, although I plan to visit the church where her mother’s funeral was held. Then, this afternoon, when Cady was going through records with me at the historical museum, I saw that Ferring had been at the same protest as your daughter, so I wondered if you knew her or her mother.”

In the dim light of the porch’s single weak bulb, I couldn’t read Gertrude Perec’s expression, but I could tell that her muscles tightened. “When Ferring came here in ’83, she was famous, at least for Lawrence, Kansas, so of course I saw her. Anyway, she’s black, and since that’s such a small part of our town, she stood out. But I didn’t know her when she was a child.”

“She didn’t live that far from here, just across that river, if I’m reading the maps correctly.”

“Ah, that river.” That was when Perec told me about her grandfather’s vanishing act.

I waited patiently for the end of the anecdote and the end of the discussion on disappearing grandfathers.

“The listing in the phone book for Ferring’s mother ends after 1951, when Emerald would have been about seven, so I guess they moved away, but still—”

“In 1951?” Gertrude interrupted. “They probably had to move, if they were living in North Lawrence.”

“Oh. The flood,” Cady said. “People still talk about it. We had a bad flood when I was eight, but everyone told me it was nothing compared to ’51.”

“And they were right, missy,” Gertrude said. “I was twelve, and I still remember water lapping at the curve in the road there.” She pointed toward the road, but it was too dark for me to see anything. “I had nightmares for months after, sure the water would get into my bedroom and sweep me away before my father could rescue me. During the day my brother, Clarence, and I would wade in the streets, which drove my mother wild—she was sure we would come home with cholera.”

“North Lawrence,” I prodded her. “The Ferrings were living on Sixth Street.”