I roll out of bed without trying too hard to stay quiet and rummage through the dresser drawers until I find the sports bra and leggings I snuck into my suitcase. Graham had insisted while I was packing that I wouldn’t need or want to work out during our wedding weekend; “There won’t be time, and plus, you already look amazing, that won’t change.” He put his arms around my waist and his hands paused on my belly and he said something about how I’m basically nonexistent I’ve gotten so thin, and normally that would be a compliment but for some reason in that moment, as I was packing to marry him, the thought of being nonexistent was alarming. Because that was how I felt. Like the wedding had taken over and I didn’t fucking exist anymore. I was no longer Eliza. And I had left Elizabeth far behind.

So I stuffed four days’ worth of workout clothes into my bag like I was smuggling drugs into Vermont straight from Colombia.

I put on the sports bra and from the hole in the side, where those useless cups normally sit deformed and annoying, I pull out the folded piece of paper. MISSING: BERNADETTE WARD with her shining eyes smiling at me like nothing was wrong. That girl had no clue what was coming to her, the devastation and torture she was about to endure. That girl was still alive. Her life had yet to be defined solely by her death. Or disappearance.

I fold the paper up again, this time smaller and more gingerly, and put it back in my bra. For some reason I don’t want to leave her in that room alone. I don’t want him to find it.

The hallway is speckled with night-lights, lining the wood paneling every couple of feet like an airplane aisle during an emergency evacuation. This way. This way, please. You’re going the right direction. As if when you’re cascading to your death at five hundred miles an hour, you’ll be thinking, Thank God my demise will be well lit.

The gym is in the furnished basement, in a room next to the pool table, a second bar, and a guest bedroom bigger than my first apartment. It’s covered in floor-to-ceiling mirrors and one large window at just the right height that you can look out into the darkness of the backyard while on the treadmill. You can stare at the mountains during the day, but I’m never here during the day.