She had always half believed that Everard knew. And one day he would tell her. (Not Davy or Joey. Marya. Because there was a special feeling between them, wasn’t there: he had to love her more than he loved his daughter Alice because Marya was so much sharper, smarter, so much her father’s daughter.) But in the end, and quite casually, it was Wilma who would give Marya all the information she required.

MARYA HAD BEGUN to make official inquiries after her mother, Marya even placed personal classified ads, without success. No one named Vera Sanjek Knauer had ever been imprisoned in the state, or even arrested for any crime; nor had she been admitted as a mental patient to any state facility. The only public records pertaining to her were a record of birth and a marriage certificate. (Studying the photostatted documents Marya made the simple calculation that her mother had been seventeen at the time of her marriage to Joseph Knauer, seventeen and five months at the time of Marya’s birth, and twenty-five when she abandoned Marya and her brothers.)

She was stunned to discover, not long afterward, that Vera had never even been reported missing from Shaheen Falls. No one in the sprawling Sanjek family had cared enough, or had wanted to get involved with the authorities; and Everard and Wilma evidently hadn’t wanted her back. (Marya seemed to remember one or the other of them saying good riddance—“good riddance to bad rubbish” was the expression. Though that may have been Marya herself, Marya as a slightly older child, who said it.)

So long as a missing person is above the age of eighteen and isn’t wanted for any crime, being “missing” isn’t in itself criminal; it isn’t in fact all that uncommon in the United States. So Marya learned.

The personal ads were run for weeks in a dozen local newspapers across the state. She labored over their wording but the results were painful, meager, embarrassing.

Mrs. Vera Knauer urgently sought by daughter. Please contact M.K., Box ___, at once.

And:

Information concerning Mrs. Vera Sanjek Knauer, widow of Joseph Knauer, urgently requested. Reward. Please contact M.K., Box ___, at once.

For the first time in her life Marya scanned the personal columns. She began to notice here and there ads that resembled hers, that were as patently futile—information sought concerning people not seen in decades, lost fathers, husbands, mothers, wives, runaway children, the lot. In three of the papers in which her ad ran she happened to notice:

HELP. URGENT. Information sought concerning a baby boy (Caucasian, no birth defects) left at the intersection of Prospect & Ninth, Yewville, NY, Sept. 5, 1941. REWARD. Contact W.H., Box ___.