And she was right. They called on Friday morning to ask Dad to join the search for Nancy. The sky was like lead. Snow threatened. Rose watched him zip up his jacket in the back hall. He looked grim.

“I’m coming, too,” Rose said impulsively.

“No, darlin’. You don’t want to be there if we find her.”

“You think it’s bad as that?”

He gave her a flat look, like he didn’t really want to think about it, no less speak. Jerram came rushing downstairs in the ratty sweats he slept in. “Wait up, I’m coming,” he shouted and ran back to get dressed.

“Me, too,” Rose insisted but made no move toward her coat.

Mom stood in the kitchen doorway, her arms wrapped around herself, still in her raspberry-red robe.

“You don’t have to go, too, Jerram,” she said when he came back down to put on his boots.

Jerram straightened, red in the face from his efforts at doing up his Velcro straps. “I’ve never seen a dead body,” he said.

Mom looked stricken. “Don’t say that, we don’t know …”

“No more discussion, please,” Dad said. “Let’s just get this over with.”

When they opened the door a harsh wind blew in. Rose shivered and changed her mind about going. She went upstairs to sit in her big old favorite chair and glare out the window at the sky and hope for snow or sun … something to make the season seem alive.

The search was unsuccessful that day and the next. On Sunday, there was a silent prayer for

Nancy in church. The atmosphere was morbid. Rose felt her mother’s hand grab hers. She wondered if her mother was feeling glad that it wasn’t Rose who had disappeared. And maybe feeling guilty for thinking it.

Two

By Monday, everyone had a theory: Nancy had run off because she was pregnant; Nancy had been kidnapped by two strange men in a dark red car that ran a light at Madison and Beacon on Thanksgiving eve; Nancy had been murdered by Wallace Romola. Silver Henning had to bring Wallace in because of all the calls he received over the weekend, people swearing Wallace had been acting suspiciously on the town common the night Nancy disappeared. Nancy would have walked across the common on her way home.

“Poor Wallace,” Mom said at breakfast Monday morning.

“He’ll be free by noon,” said Dad.

“But it’s a shame for him to be put through that.”

“Maybe he did it,” Jerram said, lifting a spoonful of cereal to his mouth and missing. His eyes were on his history book, busily cramming for the exam he hadn’t studied for all weekend.

Mom looked horrified. “How can you say such a thing? Wallace is a harmless boy.”

“Wallace is thirty-six years old,” Dad said. “Wallace is brain dead,” said Jerram.