“Do you want me to look for her?” Frick said. He tucked the window screen into Paige’s closet. “Drive around?”

“No,” Mom said.

Bedogi cried for an hour or so. Mom tried her best to soothe him—she rocked him and hummed louder and louder until he heard it over his screams and quieted. Soon, his breathing slowed, and he fell asleep. It was then, when I think Bedogi was dreaming a dream he’d never remember, that Mom went to put him to bed, telling me to pick up the blanket on the couch and follow her. When I got to Paige’s room Mom had the light on and stood staring at the empty space on Paige’s bedroom floor. The ash basket Bedogi slept in was gone.

“Bitch,” Mom said.

“Do you think she was drinking?” Frick said, but Mom had no answer.

Mom made up her bed and put Bedogi in the middle with two pillows on each side. She came out of her room, didn’t say anything, and walked outdoors. Frick followed, but Mom looked at him once and only once, so he stayed indoors with me and didn’t speak, sat at the kitchen table while I sat on the linoleum in the living room. When Mom came back in, she washed her hands, scrubbing the smoke from her fingers.

“Do you want me to find her?” Frick said.

The sink thumped off, and Mom dried her hands on her jeans.

“I know what you want,” she said. “Just go. If you find her, you find her. If you don’t, then I know where you are.” Mom turned and went into the bathroom.

Frick put his boots on, laced them up, and was gone before Mom even flushed the toilet. She didn’t say anything to me when she came out. She turned off all the lights in the kitchen and living room, then with careful steps walked down the dark hallway and into her room.

. . .

I would tell this story a few times as I got older, and sometimes in the telling I would say I stayed there on the floor all night, but other times I’d say I put myself to bed. In the later attempts to tell it—once to a therapist and once to a girl I would be married to for a few years—I began to mention this detail, that I couldn’t remember if I sat there all night or put myself to bed, in order to make the account more truthful. And so I don’t know if I stayed there all night or put myself to bed, but I now question whether or not this detail makes the story any more honest.