I hadn’t thought about Mom in a long time. Months. Maybe even close to a year. Guilt washed over me. In second grade, I had thought Mom’s kidnappers would murder her if I didn’t think about her every hour—like wherever they had her in the world, her survival depended on my thoughts. I had been obsessed with making sure I did it and had set my alarm at night to wake me up. I had developed a weird form of OCD, and it had gotten me sent back to the psychologist I’d only recently stopped seeing. It felt eerily similar now. Like if I didn’t keep her in my awareness at all times, she’d disappear again.

I eyed the doors leading to the other parts of the hospital. If I wandered past her in the hallway, would she recognize me immediately? Or would it be more of a strange pull toward me without being able to figure out why? For a while after she went missing, I had insisted on getting my hair cut every few weeks so it would stay the same length, because I had been terrified she wouldn’t recognize me if I looked different.

What did she look like now? Nobody had said anything to Dad about her appearance. They’d barely said anything at all. All Marcos would tell us was that she’d shown up at a gas station in northern Montana with a baby, screaming for help, and they’d hospitalized them. He had promised he’d answer all Dad’s questions in person. I eyed the closed door again. It was taking them forever.

And why was nobody talking about the elephant in the room?

What was Mom going to think when she found out Dad was married again? It wasn’t his fault he’d moved on. If he’d had his way, he’d still be stuck journaling to her every morning and laying out her nightgown on her side of the bed every night. He would’ve waited forever. He always said they had the kind of love that only came around once in a lifetime.

FOUR

MEREDITH

NOW

I gripped Scott’s hand underneath the table. We sat in white plastic chairs at the head, like it was some strange formal dinner, and we were the important guests. Harsh fluorescent lighting cast a bluish-green hue across the run-down room, and floral-print wallpaper left over from the eighties peeled from the wall behind me. The lead investigator, Marcos, sat on the right side of the table. He was flanked by his partner on one side and a police officer on the other. An important executive from the hospital occupied the remaining chair, while other doctors lined the walls. There were too many people standing, and it made the small space feel even tinier.

“I just don’t understand why you can’t give me any answers.” I’d never heard Scott sound so angry. He glared at Marcos. Scott had gone from being in a shocked stupor to releasing a series of rapid-fire questions from the moment they shut the door behind us: