“It’s going to be okay, M. I know how to do this. I know you’re scared, and I am, too, which is weird. I’ve never had to do this before for someone I care about. And I don’t have a lot of friends. But I’m good at my job. I never get to save the day. I’m not going to screw this up. Okay?”  They’d stared into each other’s tears, a pin in the map of their odd new friendship. “It’s going to be good. You’re going to be fine. We’ll work this out. I promise.”

Samantha scratched her nails over Marcelline’s shoulder. A friendly, reassuring grand gesture from the least touchy-feely person Marcelline had ever met.

“And now you need to pick a birthday that’s a holiday— What? It makes the date easy to remember. And it makes good stories that are easy to come up with. Fourth of July, Christmas, Halloween, something, any of those. And”—Samantha snapped her fingers—“you need a trauma, a reason not to talk about things, a reason not to be on social media.”

Marcelline had looked at Samantha as if she’d turned into a beetle on a path straight across her foot, and cupped her hand over the sunset palette of scars at her jawline. “How will we ever think of anything?”

Samantha shook her head. “Right.” She looked Marcelline over. “Okay. Simple. You’ve got a psycho ex-husband. You ran. He’s cut you off from your family. It’s PTSD and you won’t even say his name.” Samantha looked unselfconsciously at the scar when Marcelline dropped her hand. “They’ll believe you.”

So in her new life, whenever she talked about herself at all, Emma O’Connor said she loved having a birthday on Halloween. The story was that all her life there was always a masquerade that no one had to go to any extra trouble for. And she was effectively a refugee from a horror that would be cruel to prod. It was the exit to any conversation she didn’t want to have.

Her official paper trail was shallow, but reliable. Marcelline Gossard was gone. Some people, a lot of people, thought she was dead. Knew she was dead. Counted very much on her being dead. Samantha stayed close, always there by phone and text, and kept a watch for who looked for Marcelline online.

•  •  •

Emma watched the video dozens of times after June was once again situated for the night.

She read the comments on the different postings, searching through the You go, girl, and cheers and horrid troll commentary for clues as to where this attack had taken place. As to where the painting was hanging right now.

She wrenched her eyes off the taunting wedge of it in the video to study the girl, the street, the direction of the late-afternoon light to orient the house to the compass.