“Nic. Get in the house and lock the doors.”

I did. I dropped the rock and ran, the phone cutting through the air with each pump of my arms. I ran the remaining distance between the woods and the house, slamming the door behind me and turning the lock, like Daniel had said.

“I’m inside,” I said, out of breath, walking to the kitchen window, staring into the woods. I couldn’t see anything. No sign of life.

“You’re okay?”

“I’m inside,” I repeated, my hand over my heart. Slow down.

“Stay in the house,” he said. “I’m here.”

His blue SUV pulled all the way to the garage, and I watched him exit the driver’s side, but he didn’t walk toward the house. He went straight for the woods.

I ran out front again. “Daniel! What the hell are you doing?”

“Stay inside, Nic.” He started jogging away from me.

Like hell. I wasn’t about to stay in the house while he went into the woods I’d just run out of in a panic. I walked back to the edge of the woods and stood outside the tree line, trying to keep my breathing quiet and measured. I watched him disappear in fragments—a sliver of him sliding behind that tree, an arm lost to a branch, his footsteps to the wind. I kept my eyes focused on the spot where he’d disappeared, willing him to return.

I waited, my breathing growing louder, my pulse gaining speed, and jumped at the phone ringing in my hand. Everett. I hit the silence button and immediately heard footsteps coming closer. “Daniel?” I whispered, craning my neck to get a better view. And then louder: “Daniel?”

I saw a shock of blond hair first, then a shoulder. Half a face, his long, lanky legs. He came out shaking his head, tucking something in the back of his pants.

“Didn’t see anyone,” he said.

“Is that a gun?”

He didn’t answer. Kept moving toward the house, expecting me to keep up. “Are you sure you heard someone?” he asked.

“Why the hell do you have a gun?”

“Because we live in the middle of nowhere and it takes the cops too long to get to the house. Everyone has a gun.”

“No, not everyone. That can’t be safe, just walking around with it tucked inside your pants.”

He held the door for me, waited until we were inside, and took a deep breath. “Nic, are you sure? Tell me exactly what you heard.”

I couldn’t meet his eyes. “I was at the clearing, the one where we used to make forts, and I thought I heard footsteps.” I strained to hear in my memory, but I felt like I was forcing it, making the leaves crunch, turning up the volume. “I thought I smelled someone smoking. But I’m not sure.”

Maybe someone was watching me, but maybe there wasn’t. Like Daniel said, there’s a monster out there. It’s not too much of a stretch when you haven’t been sleeping enough, when you’ve just been threatened, when the people you love have disappeared. It’s not too hard to believe in monsters here.

“Maybe you should’ve figured that out before you called, scaring the shit out of me.”

I glared at him. “I was scared.”

He did that deep-breathing technique, trying not to explode at me. I felt my shoulders tightening, like his did when he was tense. “Your eyes are all bloodshot. Have you been sleeping?” he asked. I could tell he didn’t quite trust me. As the time grew between then and now, I didn’t quite trust myself, either.

“A little . . . I can’t, really,” I said. “I can’t sleep here—”

“I told you to come stay with us, Nic. Come stay with us.”

I started to laugh. “Because that would solve everything, right? When did you get the gun, Daniel?”

He picked at the pile of receipts on the table, narrowing his eyes, putting them back where they’d been. “Laura told me what happened at the shower. She feels terrible. Let her take care of you. She’s driving me crazy.”

“And how would you explain that? Why I suddenly want to stay?”

“Air-conditioning,” he said, the side of his mouth quirking up for a second.

“I can’t, Daniel. Besides, and no offense, but Laura is really nosy.”

He shook his head but didn’t argue. “Listen, I have to be on-site tomorrow, but I’ll swing by in the morning to check on you. If you can’t reach me, you know you can call Laura. She can handle it.”

“Right.”

“You don’t give her enough credit, Nic.”

I saw the outline of the gun as he walked away. “It’s a family trait,” I called after him, but he shook his head and kept moving. “Daniel?” He stopped, spun around. “Thank you for coming.”

He turned back around and waved in acknowledgment as he walked away. At the car, he rested his arms on top of it. “Did you get the affidavits?”

“One for two,” I said. “Working on the other one.”

He nodded. “The gun was Dad’s,” he said. “I didn’t think it was safe for him to have it anymore. I took it from him so he wouldn’t hurt himself. Or someone else.”

* * *

SO WE HAD A father who drank too much. So he didn’t come home sometimes. So he forgot to get groceries. So he left us to our own devices. We were lucky. In the grand scheme of life, ten years later, I could see: We were lucky.

Corinne was not that lucky. We never knew this. Hannah Pardot was the one who broke Corinne’s father open, let him weep out all his secrets. Hannah Pardot knew how to push and where. Probably because of what my father had told her. It’s a family matter, he’d said, lowering his voice, giving it meaning.

Corinne had two much younger siblings. She was eleven when her parents had Paul Jr.—PJ, Corinne called him—and Layla followed two years after. They were little kids, seven and five, when Corinne went missing. Silent and stoic, unusual for children—that’s what Hannah Pardot told Bricks and what Bricks told everyone else. Hannah asked them questions as they sat on the white sectional sofa in their living room and their mother handed out lemonade and they looked at their father, waiting for their orders. They looked at their father when Hannah asked if Corinne had seemed sad or upset, or if they’d heard her say anything. Any little thing at all, she’d said. Anything about her state of mind. They looked at their father, questioning. They looked at him like the answer.

* * *

CORINNE’S MOTHER HAD TAKEN her to the hospital twice. Hannah Pardot read the reports out loud to Corinne’s father: once for a dislocated elbow—climbing out the window, Corinne had told us, rolling her eyes; another for a laceration at the hairline—river jumping, damn slippery rocks.