‘Thank God. I was about to get in the car and start driving, anywhere. Half the restaurant staff are out looking for you. Jaxon, too—he borrowed the neighbour’s car and drove to the restaurant to help search. We’ve called all the bus companies, the taxi depot …’ He’s breathless and talking faster than I’ve ever heard him. ‘We tried every restaurant and diner. You disappeared into thin air. I was freaking out, Sky. Are you sure you’re okay? Where are you? Are you really okay?’ It’s like he’s reaching through the phone, needing, wanting me to be okay. But I’m not. I feel bad for scaring him, but nothing’s okay between him and me.

‘It’s just that I need you to pick me up. There are police here with me.’

‘Police? Yes. Of course. Pick you up. Yes, yes.’

I can hear voices in the background. Shouting. I can just make out Jaxon’s voice saying, ‘Is it her?’

‘Shush,’ my father says. ‘Yes, it’s her. She’s okay. Hold on.’ He returns to me. ‘Where are you? I’m coming now.’

After I give him all the details, the officers settle at a table next to me with a couple of bear claws—donuts shaped like a paw and covered in icing and cinnamon. They’ll wait with me until Adam arrives. Cops and donuts, it’s like a real-life Simpsons episode.

Ted insists on buying me another snack before he goes. He has to get back on the road. We go to the cashier together and he tells me my father sounds like a good dude.

‘Nobody’s perfect,’ he says. ‘You’ll realise that one day.’ He gives me a pat on the back. ‘You have to take the good with the bad.’

I try to give the beanie back to him, but he insists I keep it.

‘A reminder to never hitchhike again,’ he says, before leaving me with a story he heard when he was a kid of a serial killer who used to prey on backpackers. Yikes.

I open my packet of chips, stuff a few in my mouth, and am about to return to my table when the cashier waves me over. ‘Did you say festival before? So freaky. I just saw this picture of someone I know at some festival. Looks pretty awesome.’ She turns her phone around to show me. It’s on Facebook. I zoom in on the image— there’s a bunch of people sitting around a blazing fire, snow everywhere, drumming. It’s captioned, New Moon Women’s Gathering.

This must be it.

I ask the cashier if I can use her phone for a second to check the address.

‘Take it for as long as you want,’ she says, surprising me and disappearing into the storage room out back. So generous.