Dee understands for the first time why people faint and how it happens; like a white light going off in her brain, a flash, followed by a dark shock. She now knows where the suspect lived, maybe even still lives. She breathes shallow and fast. That would be enough, but it is not only that.

“We were there that day,” Dee whispers. “Dad took a wrong turn.” Her mouth fills with the taste of memory and bubble gum. She must have chewed thirty pieces on that long-ago ride. Dad was driving to the lake but he missed an exit and they ended up wandering, lost, through the endless gray suburbs that hemmed the forest. Then the rows of one-stories thinned out and gave way to peeling Victorian houses, and the rank wild scent of the woods grew strong. These were streets that went nowhere. She recalls driving past that sign and thinking, Yes, this craphole is totally needless. The street was a dead end, she recalls. Dad wiped his brow and swore under his breath, and they turned around and retraced their steps.

They found Highway 101 again soon after, and the name of the street receded into the depths of Dee’s mind, to be shelved with other useless information—what color the attendant’s uniform had been when they stopped for gas, who liked her best at school, who played bass in that band.

For a moment Dee considers whether this could be coincidence. But she rejects this idea with a strong mental shove. It must be connected, somehow. It must.

Did the suspect see them driving in their slow lost circles? Did he glimpse Lulu’s bored face at the window, and did he then follow them to the lake? Did Dad even speak to him? Maybe he stopped to ask the suspect for directions. The suspect wouldn’t have needed to follow, then. He would have known their destination, could have gone straight to the lake. Dee tries and tries to remember where Dad pulled over. But just as certain parts of that day are branded on her, charred into her flesh, others are soft and out of focus. It seemed like just another dead-end road. She and Lulu were kids; bored and hot. They didn’t know that these were the last few moments of peace before lightning cracked open the world and everything changed forever.

Reason dictates that Dee tell the police. She should call tired Karen, who is still in charge of the case. Lulu is a missing person. No body has been found. (There was a time when Dee would have thought that missing was better than dead, but the long years have taught her better.)

“This is not supposed to happen,” Karen said once to Dee. “Most of us spend our whole career without dealing with a stranger child abduction. It wears you thin, in ways you can’t predict. Sometimes I think, why here? Why me?”