I pulled up my knees and wrapped my arms around them. With my hands pressed over my ears and my eyes closed, I tried to remember how Chicken had been snoozing in a rectangle of sunlight. And how worried Maisy’s face looked. And how Gloria and Telly told the woman with the microphone that they missed me. Gloria was crying. My mother was actually crying. About me.

MAISY

“Do you want to clean your guns, Telly?”

“No, Bids. Don’t feel like that now. How about a show? We can wait for the late news to come on.”

Telly turned on the TV and sat down in his chair. I squeezed in beside him. A man and a lady were playing a piano and singing funny. Telly laughed. I laughed too, to make Telly happy. I put my head on his shoulder, like I did when me and Rowan watched our show together. Telly put his arm around my back. I forgot how soft and warm he was. I was really tired.

Next thing, Telly was shaking my arm. “Bids? There you are. There you are again.”

I opened my eyes.

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” he said. He pointed at the TV.

Then I saw me in my dress. Me and Gloria and Telly in front of our house. I already saw it once after supper, and there I was again. My eyes were shut up with the sun. Chicken’s eyes were shut up, too. He was pretending to be asleep on the grass, but he kept chomping at the flies. The man at his desk and then Anita all dressed up, and then that girl who saw Rowan with Carl. But she said stuff that didn’t sound right. Both times Telly put his hands over my ears for that part.

“Do you think that’s true, Telly?” Gloria said. “About the knife and the dog?”

“Could be.” He took his arm out from behind my back and rubbed at his face. “I can’t think about it.”

“But for our part, we did a decent job,” Gloria said. “Didn’t we?”

“Best we could, Glow. Given the circumstances and all. That sort of thing’s not easy for no one.”

“I really think it’s going to help.” She had her elbows on the back of Telly’s chair.

“It might. I mean, they got to be somewhere, right? No one just disappears.”

I sat up. And then I remembered Jenny the Head. She just disappeared all the time. “Do you think Rowan seen us?”

“I got no idea,” Gloria said. “But lots of other people did.”

“Lots of people who might notice Rowan out on the street or in a store. Or they might see that man, Bids. And then they’ll call the police, and they’ll go catch him. That’s how this stuff works.”