She struggled to remember how this could’ve happened. For a moment the recent past was a maddening blank. Then it came to her. The girl wanted to swing in the backyard, and Becky said Go on, that’s fine, hardly paying any attention. At the time she was text-messaging with Travis McKean. They were having a fight. Becky didn’t even hear the back screen door slapping shut.

what am i supposed to tell my mom, Travis said, i don’t even know if I want to stay in college let alone start a family. And this gem: if we get married will i have to say I DO to your bro too? hes always around sitting on your bed reading skateboreding magazine, i m amazed he wasn’t sitting there watching the night i got you pregnant. you want a family you should start one with him

She had made a little scream down in her throat and chucked the phone against the wall, leaving a dent in the plaster, hoped the parents came back drunk and didn’t notice. (Who were the parents anyway? Whose house was this?) Beck had wandered to the picture window that looked into the backyard, pushing her hair away from her face, trying to get her calm back—and saw the empty swing moving gently in the breeze, chains softly squalling. The back gate was open to the driveway.

She went out into the jasmine-scented evening and shouted. She shouted in the driveway. She shouted in the yard. She shouted until her stomach hurt. She stood in the center of the empty road and yelled “Hey, kid, hey!” with her hands cupped around her mouth. She walked down the block and into the grass and spent what felt like days pushing through the high weeds, looking for the wayward child, her lost responsibility. When she emerged at last, the car was waiting for her and she took off. And here she was, driving aimlessly, scanning the sidewalks, a desperate, animal panic rising inside her. She had lost her girl. Her girl had gotten away from her—wayward child, lost responsibility—and who knew what would happen to her, what might be happening to her right now? The not-knowing made her stomach hurt. It made her stomach hurt bad.

A storm of little birds flowed through the darkness above the road.

Her throat was dry. She was so fucking thirsty she could hardly stand it.

Pain knifed her, went in and out, like a lover.

When she drove past the baseball field for a second time, the players had all gone home. Game called on account of darkness, she thought, a phrase that caused her arms to prickle with goose bumps, and that was when she heard a child shout.

“BECKY!” shouted the little girl. “IT’S TIME TO EAT!” As if Becky were the one who was lost. “IT’S TIME TO COME EAT!”