The Atlantic City bus pulls in, hisses, sighs out a trickle of passengers. She waits to see her daughter among them, squints hard at a brunette girl—Georgia might have changed her hair—but no. None of them is her daughter. She waits until the driver is done heaving suitcases from the guts of the bus, slides Gee’s picture from her wallet.

“Was this girl on your bus?”

The driver hardly glances at the photo, shakes her head no. All the passengers already gone, she says.

“No one in the bathroom?” She has a memory of walking in on Georgia taking a photo of herself in the bathroom mirror with her first cell phone. She had drawn a lipstick heart on her cheek, on each of her breasts, around the nipple. Who was it for? Deborah wanted to know. For a man online? To text to a boy? Or just for herself? She hoped it was the latter, just a celebration of being beautiful, of being young, a private, exuberant joy.

At half past seven, she walks up to the ticket window, taps on the glass. “Any other buses coming in from Atlantic City tonight?”

The woman shakes her head, pulls a sliver of onion from her burger, coils it onto the paper wrapper, licks a spot of ketchup from her thumb. Deborah fumbles her phone out of her bag and dials the number for the motel Georgia told her about. It rings and rings and rings, but no one picks up.

Deborah sits in the parking lot until after midnight, thinking of the sound of her daughter’s voice on the phone, the light coming through the jars of jam. At 12:03, she turns the engine on. It’s a three-hour drive to Atlantic City. She hasn’t been there since a trip she took with a few other schoolteachers, back in ’99. She was shocked at the dinginess of it back then. It can only be worse now. She’s seen stories on the news: the opioid epidemic, the casinos shutting down, the gang violence, Hurricane Sandy battering the coast. It’s a wonder there’s anything left.

She stops for a coffee, even though she doesn’t need it. Her body is humming with purpose; her heart feels like it’s gotten loose, untethered, tumbling around in her chest. She’ll bring her girl back. This time, Georgia will come home.

CLARA

AFTER I GOT HOME FROM the beach, I slept soundly for the first night in a long time. I woke up with sunlight bright at the edges of my blinds, and as I opened my eyes I could hear the pushcart men on the boardwalk calling ride ride ride. Seagulls screeched, the waves thumped against the shore. But otherwise, silence. No screaming babies. No visions of strange rooms. There was a new clarity and stillness to everything around me. I felt like I could breathe again.