“Where am I supposed to go?” He cringed at the plaintive note in his voice. “Where am I supposed to go, Cassie? I live here. With you and Max.”

“Not anymore,” she said. “Not right now, you don’t.”

If ever there was a bender, Anthony Puckett was on it. He had a rum concoction at Captain Nick’s. Two Narragansett IPAs at Ballard’s. A Cocktail Crush at Mahogany Shoals, where he listened to a guy from Galway singing Irish sea chanteys. Before the guy sang, he quoted Yeats, which Anthony thought was a nice touch. How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.

When he stumbled home sometime later—who knew how much later; he had forgotten about the way time stretched and bent when you were drinking—he tripped over something just outside his front door. He almost kept going without checking what it was, but then he saw that it was his cell phone. He’d forgotten about his phone halfway into his second IPA. It had been sort of refreshing, to be out of touch, not to have wondered if Joy was trying to call, if anyone was trying to call.

He had twenty-seven missed calls and thirteen text messages from Cassie, and they all said different versions of the same things. His heart lurched and every dream he’d had about Max came shooting to the surface.

Max and Dorothy were missing.

Chapter 40

LU

THIS HAD BETTER not be you, Nancy, thought Lu, when the doorbell rang after Maggie had gone. It was too late for Nancy to be out and about anyway. She tended to stay on her own side of the island once Henry had fixed her her first gin and tonic, and very wisely so.

Sure enough, Nancy was not on the other side of the door. It was Anthony, smelling like a brewery that made very hoppy beer and looking like he’d just crawled out of a Dumpster. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was messed, his signature gray T-shirt had a stain on it in the shape of a cumulus cloud.

“Sorry to bother you.” He was slurring. Oh, boy. Anthony had fallen off the wagon, and he’d fallen really hard.

“No bother,” she said. “Come in.”

“My son took my mother and is missing.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not right, my mother took my son. They’re missing. And I can’t get home, because there’s no more ferries.”

Lu glanced at the clock. Nine-thirty. It was a Tuesday; the last ferry departed at seven forty-five on Tuesdays. “Missing?” she said. “What do you mean, missing?”

“I mean gone,” Anthony said. He made a move to sit on the couch but misjudged and ended up on the floor. Lu helped him up. She took off his shoes. “Kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?”

“Maybe.” Anthony wrinkled his forehead. He looked confused.

“Did Cassie call the police?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did she put out an Amber Alert?”

“I’m not sure.” Anthony rubbed his face. “I’m—”