Bennett cursed under his breath. “How did that get through the hiring process?”

“I don’t think it was known at the time. But she moved around a lot. It doesn’t seem like her, to be honest, but that’s what they said.” Elyse hadn’t seemed anything like my mother had, with the sudden shift in demeanor, the unpredictability, and the money draining in inverse proportion.

But we both knew that sometimes it could be more hidden than that. Especially in the health care field. The percentage of addiction was the same as in the general population; the only difference was access. In a medical facility, things could go missing easily on their way to the intended patient. Saline substituted for morphine. We’d all heard of cases of the diversion of medicine. It was how my mother first started, I believed. The inventory at her fingertips in the homes where she worked. The easiest accessible remedy.

It was why we had a tight inventory process at the hospital. But it could be hard to catch when the medicine was supposed to be heading out and just not reaching its intended recipient.

Or when you were in a drawer for something justified and seized the opportunity.

“What were you fighting about, Bennett? That day at my house?” I wondered if he had suspected her; if he’d made some veiled accusation that had sent her running.

He sighed. “We were both emotional, and she was running on no sleep, obviously. She was going on and on about watching out for who showed up, telling me to keep a lookout at the window, and I thought she was being ridiculous. And she started yelling, like, There’s a dead fucking body, obviously I’m not overreacting. And I said she was in no shape to work, not even in enough shape to care for you, and to get out of there. And that’s the last thing I heard from her.”

I stared at him.

“I know, I know. I might’ve said Get the fuck out of here.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. It was the same thing he’d said to me when he found me in the medicine room. “Hearing it back now, it sounds worse than I thought. I told her she was in no shape for work. I told her to go, and she did. Of course, if she was an addict, the behavior would make sense, that paranoia . . .”

“She wasn’t paranoid,” I said. Not usually. Not that I’d noticed. She was more free-spirited than I was. She was open, and let herself be vulnerable, and flirted with bartenders. But she also came to the hospital as soon as she’d heard, kept watch over me, cooked me food, stayed while I slept. With Elyse, I’d thought I was seeing another possible path my life could’ve taken, but maybe I was only seeing another iteration of the same. Another girl, another story being told in the aftermath by the pieces left behind.

I walked up the back steps, and Bennett shifted out of the way so I wouldn’t brush up against him. I unlocked the door: “Are you coming in?”

“Yeah.” Everything was a beat too slow, just slightly forced. We’d left things awkwardly the last time he was here—coming closer and then falling apart within the space of thirty minutes.

When I poured a drink of water, I caught him staring at the scar on my arm. He was frowning, and I heard an echo of his words—must’ve been incredibly painful.

I shook the thought, turning away, and his gaze averted.

“Did you not suspect her, Bennett?”

He looked somewhere over my shoulder, out the window, into the woods. “No, I didn’t.”

The way he wasn’t looking at me made me nervous. I wondered if, ever since he’d found me in the medicine room, he’d truly suspected me instead. If he had been through my things while I was unconscious. If he was checking to see what he’d found.

“Is this why you were looking for me earlier?” he asked. I nodded, and he started pacing. “Anyway, I came here to apologize for the other day. And my reaction. And”—he waved his arm around meaninglessly—“what I said.”

“Okay. Forgiven. It’s a lot, I get that.”

“It is,” he said in the faraway voice of someone who had spent his free time researching the events of twenty years earlier. He kept stealing glances at me like he was trying to reconcile the two.

It had been a lot back then, too. For the people, for the town, for everything surrounding us; 911 had been inundated with calls. People reporting me missing, as if they hadn’t heard. People reporting sightings of every child playing outside. The call center had to bring in extra help just to man the lines, I’d heard.

“Everything going okay? With the detective?” he asked.

I put the glass down, couldn’t tell why he was asking. Questions like this put me on edge, on the defense. I could not unravel someone’s motivation without giving too much of myself away in the process. “Yes,” I said.

“Did she say anything? About what they think happened?”

I shook my head slowly. Unsure if he was here for the information or for me.

“I know I reacted the wrong way, and I can’t take it back. I just—wanted to see you. And tell you that.”

“I’m sorry, I’m just really shaken.” I took a deep breath. “I just found out that Sean Coleman sent me a letter, wanting to tell me something, before he died.”

“Oh. Oh God. Do you have any idea what?”

“No, but I’m actually about to head out. Hoping I’ll know more soon.”

“Sure. Okay. Do you want me to come? I mean, would it help if I was there?”

Bennett probably thought I was meeting with the police again. He was holding his breath, and I could see how badly he did not want to come. How uncomfortable he was, standing there, trying to figure out the right thing to do.

“No,” I said. “But thank you.”

“All right,” he said. “Well, you know how to reach me, Liv.”

He did not want to get pulled into this mess. Maybe he’d thought he could handle it, in theory. That he was a bigger person. But there was too much chaos here; too much even for Bennett to fix. Which was ironic, since he was trained in managing crises. He was good at the surrounding organization. At creating a simplicity and an action plan. But as much as we saw human beings reduced to checklists and spreadsheets in practice, there were no such predictable outcomes outside the hospital.

And, I realized, that was probably all Bennett ever wanted. A predictable existence that I would never give him.

AFTER BENNETT LEFT, I thought back to Sean Coleman’s letter, telling me where he would be staying. That was a sure way to find out how long he’d been in town. And how long he could have been watching me.

The Highland Inn was on the outskirts of town, new but simple. It functioned less as a hub for activity related to the hospital and more as a waypoint for outdoor treks. It was the last stop before an empty stretch of road that eventually ended at the ski resorts. But there was easy access from there to tubing, rafting, and mountain biking. There was a campground a few miles away, at the head of the river, if you wanted to really rough it. Otherwise, Highland Inn was the best option.

It was dark by the time I pulled in. The lot was half-full, but there were no people in the lobby other than a single man in a suit behind the counter who pretended he didn’t see me when I walked in. The glass doors slid shut silently behind me as I walked to the desk.

He finally raised his eyes when I was standing directly in front of him. “Can I help you?” he asked with an accommodating smile.