“He was trying to take her. Or hurt her,” Brecken says calmly. “We had no idea. We thought we all met at the airport, but he met Mira earlier.”

“We just wanted to go home,” Harper says, stone-faced.

“But he wanted her,” Brecken says. He sounds angry. “He stalked her here and used us to try to take her. There are letters. It’s all in there.”

I shiver. I still haven’t read all the letters. Looking at Brecken’s stricken face now makes me wonder if I’ll ever be able to stomach reading them.

“This boy followed her from the airport?” the man asks.

“No, from her home. From both of her homes,” Brecken says. “It’s gone on a long time.”

“Where’s the blond girl?” he asks. “Tall. Strung out.”

“She left,” I croak. “She was helping him. He gave her something to do it.”

“Pills,” he guesses. “He gave her a few at the bar.”

“She pushed me,” I say, sniffing. “She apologized in the bar because she knew she was going to help him take me. I can’t believe pills would be enough for that.”

“People do crazy things. For pills and less.”

“I don’t think we can ever understand why people do what they do,” Harper says. And maybe she’s thinking of her father. But her eyes linger on Brecken.

“People aren’t always what we think,” the man says, putting his hat back on.

I can’t ignore that, because I can’t convince myself that the smell lingering on his clothes and his ratty hat didn’t shift my perspective. I can’t deny all the ways my instinct failed me here, so I burn in shame and watch for the flashing lights of the police in silence.

This time they come right away.

* * *

My mother meets me at the hospital on Christmas morning. I expect her to be a tear-streaked wreck, but she is steady and calm, depositing her coat on the chair beside my bed and glancing at the monitor where my vitals are being recorded. She doesn’t look for long. I guess I’m doing okay.

Her gaze lands on me next, and then her hands are on my face, and I am crying. Great gulping sobs that shake my shoulders and make my mostly-numb arm ache. Mom slips off her snow boots and crawls right into my hospital bed.

The hospital sheets are scratchy, and her hands are soft. She tells me over and over, “Breathe with me. Just breathe.”

She said that to Phoebe, and it only makes me cry harder. I wrap my good arm around her shoulder, my hand bandaged but functional. I don’t understand. I don’t understand why she’s strong when I pictured her rocking by the bathroom sink. Peeling potatoes for no reason at all. Staring into space and bursting into tears without warning.