It wasn’t the life—it was the man. Images of how Scott had taken care of me after my parents died when I was seventeen passed through me in snippets—the hours he’d spent sitting with me at the hospital long after they’d been pronounced dead. He’d kept everyone away from me until I had been ready to leave. He’d been my emotional container for the fits of rage that I had unleashed for years as I had struggled to process how I’d been robbed of so much.

“He saved my life.” I swallowed the tears in my throat before remembering that he’d instructed me not to hold back my emotions. I let go, and suddenly I was crying in a way I hadn’t done since I was a kid. Ray didn’t move from his spot. He didn’t reach out to comfort me or say anything to make it better. The awkwardness of it all slowed my emotional outburst. “I don’t know who I am without him. I’ve always wondered who I might be on my own. But I feel like the world’s most terrible person for even having the thoughts.”

I’d never admitted that to anyone before. Not Christina. Certainly not Scott. I’d barely acknowledged it to myself. What else would he pull out of me that I’d never told anyone?

ELEVEN

ABBI

NOW

My eyes burned. I stared at the coffeepot, wishing I could grab a cup like everyone else, but Dad hated me drinking coffee. He still believed the old wives’ tale that it would stunt my growth. He didn’t care that all my friends drank coffee when we went to Starbucks during open period. Sometimes I sneaked it anyway, and I was never going to make it through this day without some caffeine, since Shiloh’s crying had kept me up most of the night.

My bedroom was next to theirs, and Mom had tried to soothe her all night, but nothing had worked. She hadn’t stopped crying for longer than a few minutes. I had wanted to help Mom, but I didn’t know anything about babies, and I didn’t want to do anything to make the crying worse or embarrass Mom. I had ended up just lying in my bed, wishing them to sleep and scrolling through the older threads on the Vanished forums for anything I might have missed. Hopefully, Dad and Meredith had slept through the crying. They had been so exhausted last night Meredith almost fell asleep eating her pizza, barely making it through one slice. Mom had made up for Meredith’s lack of appetite. I’d never seen someone eat the way she did. She had wolfed down an entire large pizza herself. She’d just kept shoveling it into her mouth, piece after piece, until suddenly it was the last piece and she’d looked mortified.

She was still upstairs getting ready. Meredith had tried to give her something of hers to wear again and Mom refused. I wished Meredith would stop offering her clothes, since she obviously didn’t want them. Would I want to wear my husband’s new wife’s clothes? Probably not. Dad was going to drag a few of her boxes of old clothes out of the garage today, so at least she’d have something until we could go shopping.