I pause a moment to think, mulling around the possibilities in my mind when I hear my mother’s voice, so clear it could be coming from the next room.

Come on, Bobby. Just one little hit.

“What about drugs? Jax could have gone to Bobby for drugs.”

It’s not all that far-fetched. People always think it’s the trailer-park kids who are looking to numb their woes in narcotics, but the kids I grew up with couldn’t afford pills—not until they were old enough to get a job, and even then, it wasn’t pills but heroin, strong and cheap. The rich kids, though, the ones with big allowances and parents too distracted with their sixty-hour workweeks... Those kids lived in a world where anything was possible. Coke. Oxy. Adderall. They were always making a pit stop at Bobby’s trailer. My mother always said they were some of Bobby’s best clients.

I think these things, and at the same time, a memory. A fleeting image of her falling naked in the dirt. Of a pretty man—no, a boy, puking. It flits away before I can grab hold.

“What are you thinking?” Micah says, watching me from the opposite couch.

“I’m just thinking about how we lived down the street from him. From Bobby, I mean. My father was already...well, you know. But Chet and I lived four trailers down.”

Micah’s face flashes genuine surprise. “That’s...that’s quite a coincidence.”

“Is it?” I shrug, reaching for my steaming mug. “The shacks down by the river, that row of apartments off 64, the trailer parks. There are only so many places for people like us to live.”

He tilts his head at the people like us comment, but he doesn’t dismiss it. “Why haven’t you mentioned this before? And you must have been, what—two? Three?”

“Six.” I did the math this past spring, when they pulled Bobby’s skeleton from the cove. I was six that summer he disappeared. Not old enough for any real memories, only a bunch of blurry images that connect into the same, sad story. Chet crying. People raising hell out in the yard. Our mother passed out on the couch. “Enough people talk about my trailer-park past. I’m not going to go around reminding the rest.”

“I don’t talk about it.”

“I wasn’t referring to you.” I smile and sip my tea.

“But six. That’s old enough to notice when a boy from your neighborhood goes missing.”

“Honestly, the only thing I remember about Bobby was the noise.” I thread my fingers through the handle of the mug, soaking in the heat. “His car, his music, his clients coming by at all hours of the day and night. When Bobby disappeared, I wasn’t the only one who was relieved. Bobby stopped raising hell, and Chet started sleeping through the night.”