They think that she’s run away. Unlike many parents who would default to a belief that their daughter has been abducted, Ed and Alice both know that this is Stacy’s doing. Although there is no note, no missing items—not even her stuffed rabbit, which, even at her age, she still clings to—they know that there is no outside force. When she was a little girl, maybe five, she decided to run away and got as far as the end of the road before turning back, informing her parents that she had decided not to run away that day after all. Alice, who had watched her march down the road, her stuffed rabbit tucked under one arm and her Barbie backpack bouncing against her little bum, thought that the few minutes it took for Stacy to “run away” felt as long as the time it had taken for her to take her first breath; it felt similar, the wait for the breath of life, or for the childish threat to resolve. Would she take that first gasp of air? How long to wait before running after her?

Stacy has seemed so much brighter in the past month. She has smiled more, listened to more cheerful music, spent more time with them at the dinner table. She even went to a sleepover. Ed has begun to relax, thinking that if things continue to improve, it will just prove that he was right to insist on her taking this course of medication. He has been collecting the evidence of Stacy’s being more like herself, like the self they understand, to show for his bold defiance of his wife. This running away is a mistake, a misunderstanding. They know that the antidepressants can cause odd behavior as a side effect. They call her cell phone and it rings in her empty bedroom. They call all her friends, but no one has seen her. Her bike is in the garage. Her purse is on the counter.

And then the resident trooper, Trooper Rossman, is at their front door. He is the same trooper who took their missing-person report, asking questions about Stacy’s friends and whether they thought she took drugs.

“Antidepressants.” Alice spit the word out, and Ed knew that however this ended, he might never be forgiven.

Ed had insisted that they follow doctor’s recommendations and put Stacy on the antidepressants. The side effects were simple legal jargon to cover the pharmaceutical company’s liability. “We have to try. She needs a little help so that the counseling can help.”

“No.” Being her mother, Alice had known that this was a bad idea. Stacy didn’t want to take them, and Alice stood by her right to defend her daughter’s decision. She wasn’t a little child; she was a young woman who knew her own mind.

Overruled.

Trooper Rossman holds his hat is in his hands now. Uncovered, he looks younger, more human. Regretful.