“Jeez,” Kyle murmured. “I didn’t think it would be like this. This really sucks.”

“How did you find her? And catch her?” I asked. The sobbing girl didn’t react as I questioned him; she just kept crying on my shoulder. “What happened? Why is she like this?”

“Well, I thought she might be in Las Vegas. I went there first, before I went on to Portland. See, Jodi was really close to her mother, and that’s where Doris lived. I thought, seeing how you were about Jared and the kid, that maybe she would go there, even when she wasn’t Jodi. And I was right. They were all there at the same old house, Doris’s house: Doris, and her husband, Warren—they had other names, but I didn’t hear them clearly—and Sunny. I watched them all day, until it was nighttime. Sunny was in Jodi’s old room, alone. I snuck in after they’d all been asleep for hours. I yanked Sunny up, threw her over my shoulder, and jumped out the window. I thought she was going to start screaming, so I was really booking it back to the jeep. Then I was afraid because she didn’t start screaming. She was just so quiet! I was afraid she had… you know. Like that guy we caught once.”

I winced—I had a more recent memory.

“So I pulled her off my shoulder, and she was alive, just staring up at me, all wide-eyed. Still not screaming. I carried her back to the jeep. I’d been planning to tie her up, but… she didn’t look that upset. She wasn’t trying to get away, at least. So I just buckled her in and started driving.

“She just stared at me for a long time, and then finally she said, ‘You’re Kyle,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, who are you?’ and she told me her name. What is it again?”

“Sunlight Passing Through the Ice,” Sunny whispered brokenly. “I like Sunny, though. It’s nice.”

“Anyway,” Kyle went on after clearing his throat. “She didn’t mind talking to me at all. She wasn’t afraid like I’d thought she’d be. So we talked.” He was quiet for a moment. “She was happy to see me.”

“I used to dream about him all the time,” Sunny whispered to me. “Every night. I kept hoping the Seekers would find him; I missed him so much.… When I saw him, I thought it was the old dream again.”

I swallowed loudly.

Kyle reached across me to lay his hand on her cheek.

“She’s a good kid, Wanda. Can’t we send her someplace really nice?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask her about. Where have you lived, Sunny?”