Alice opens an eye. Closes it. The sun is up; already, the house is growing warm.

“Someone get that,” she says, unconvincingly. Her throat is dry. Her skin, too. In her temples, a familiar throb begins.

Where is everyone? It’s eight in the morning, according to the clock on the wall. Surely someone on staff should be here to answer. Alice closes her eyes.

•   •   •

A banging now—the door.

If their behavior last night was any indication, every guest on the grounds will be just as bad off as she is. Even Peter, who prides himself on his abstemiousness—who judges her, keeps a running count of every glass she has—even Peter was feeling his oats last night, telling long-winded stories in his odd formal way, tripping at one point over an upturned corner of carpet, cursing it in his wake.

The pounding on the door stops.

She turns her head to the window. And sees, striding down the lawn in the direction of the camp, T.J. Hewitt—the source of the urgent knocking, she imagines.

Barbara, she thinks. Barbara has no doubt done something wrong, something so egregious that even T.J.—her greatest ally—can no longer ignore it. From the time of Barbara’s birth, T.J. has watched over the girl each summer like a guard dog, a faithful companion, always on duty, just out of sight. She should have been like family.

She wasn’t.

Through the window, Alice watches until T.J. is out of sight, then closes her eyes again.

For a while, she falls into and out of a dream, feeling trapped inside her body on the bed. T.J., in the dream, is wearing a carrier she’d made one year out of rope and a curtain, something that she had fashioned to take then-baby Barbara on hikes. The two of them were a sight: teenage T.J., all sinew and frown; Barbara’s round baby face beneath her chin, peering out at the world.

Where are you going? asks Alice, in the dream. To find Bear, says T.J.

Alice’s eyes open abruptly.

Awake for the day, then. She rises.

•   •   •

Alice’s bedroom is across the hall from the largest bedroom, which Peter, of course, sleeps in. She slept there too, at one time. Now she doesn’t.

She shuffles past his door. It’s standing slightly open, and she averts her eyes.

Down the hallway now, past the room presently occupied by Marnie McLellan, John Paul Sr. and Nancy’s daughter. Past—think it—past Bear’s room, once decorated in the trappings of young boyhood, everything blue, everything messy, wet bathing suits and towels forever in a pile on the floor. It’s long since been done over. This week, it’s occupied by the Southworths.

A short, windowed corridor connects the southern wing of the house, where the bedrooms are, with the great room at its center. As Alice passes through it, something outside catches her eye.

Two vehicles are approaching, moving slowly up the driveway, making a turn toward Camp Emerson. One is Shattuck Township’s single fire truck, the property of the only volunteer fire department in a twenty-mile radius. The other is a yellow-and-blue Dodge: a statie.

Alice pauses, entranced, reminded of another day.

In the great room, the telephone begins again.

•   •   •

“Mrs. Van Laar?” the man says, on the phone. “Mrs. Van Laar?”

He is, he tells Alice, a sergeant from the state police.

“I’ve got some hard news to relay,” he says.

Alice, receiver in hand, takes in her surroundings.

What do you see, Dr. Lewis would ask her, in moments like this one.

There’s glass on the floor, she thinks. Damage from the party last night. There’s a painting askew on the wall. There’s glass on the floor, and a painting askew on the wall, and a bottle of wine on its side, and a large wine stain on the rug.

Alice breathes.

What else, Dr. Lewis would say. She can almost hear him saying it.

She looks out the window. It’s sunny outside, she thinks. It’s sunny outside, and there’s light on the water, and a worker, in the garden, is pulling weeds.

“Mrs. Van Laar,” says the man on the phone. In his voice is a note of fear. “Mrs. Van Laar, I regret to inform you that your daughter seems to be missing.”

What do you smell, Dr. Lewis would ask her.

“Are you there,” says the man on the phone. “Mrs. Van Laar, a squad is on its way. Are you there?”

I smell day-old alcohol, she thinks. I smell stale smoke from cigars and cigarettes. Underneath it all, a lemony smell—the wood polish used on the furniture.

“Are you there, Mrs. Van Laar?”

And hear? Dr. Lewis would ask her.

“Mrs. Van Laar?”

I hear a dial tone, Alice thinks. She places the receiver in its cradle. The sound goes away.

And now? Dr. Lewis would say.

Alice closes her eyes. If she tries very hard—if the wind blows right—she can sometimes hear the voices of children from Camp Emerson.

Sometimes, she can even hear Bear’s.

What do you taste, Dr. Lewis would ask her.

I taste nothing.

Focus on your senses. Anchor yourself to the world. What do you taste?

Nothing, thinks Alice. I taste nothing.

•   •   •

Through the sliding glass doors that lead to the lakeside lawn, someone enters the great room. It’s one of the two young cleaning girls they’ve hired from town, just for the week of the party. She pauses on the threshold, holding her mop and bucket in her hands, surveying the damage: the worst to date. She has not noticed Alice yet, and for this reason she allows herself to register on her face the disdain she clearly feels, to mutter something under her breath. Disgusting, perhaps, or fucking. Fucking unbelievable.