Strangely, Tracy believed her.

“Where’d you learn all that stuff?” said Tracy.

“What stuff?”

“You know. Trapping and putting up tents and all. Taking apart those squirrels. First aid.”

“Same place as you,” said Barbara. “T.J.’s classes.”

Tracy shook her head. “I don’t know what you know. I don’t think anyone does.”

Barbara was briefly quiet. “My family,” she said.

They were quiet then. There was more to the story, Tracy could tell. She didn’t press.

“Are you leaving again tonight?” said Tracy, whispering.

“I don’t think I can,” said Barbara. She shifted a little. “I don’t think my leg will let me.”

She sighed.

“Is it all right that you don’t?” said Tracy.

She said this carefully: not wanting to repeat her mistake, to anger Barbara by pressing an issue she clearly did not want to talk about.

Barbara was silent so long that Tracy assumed she had fallen asleep. The extra clothes she’d been given by T.J. lent warmth to both of them, and Tracy felt herself growing sleepy, as well.

Then, in the dark, she heard Barbara exhale.

“Probably not,” she said, quietly. “It’s probably not all right.”

Alice

1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Two

On the second day of Barbara’s absence, Alice wakes, her mouth a desert.

She’s slept all night on her stomach. A patch of wetness has spread outward onto the bedspread from her mouth.

She knows something bad has happened. The feeling of it hovers; the fact of it hasn’t arrived yet. She sits up. Reaches for the tumbler of gin on her nightstand. Drinks painfully.

She stands.

Barbara.

There it is. Her daughter has been missing since yesterday morning.

Five minutes later, Alice stands in the sunroom. She watches from the window: more parents arriving to retrieve their children, one week earlier than they’d planned.

Some—those who live in Albany or Niskayuna or Vermont—came yesterday to retrieve their children.

Others—the West Coasters, the Coloradans, those who had to catch a flight—are only arriving today, and they pull onto the Preserve with urgency in their rented or hired cars, horrified that their children have had to spend an entire night in a place where another child went missing less than twenty-four hours earlier.

•   •   •

She understands. She remembers feeling this way about Bear: that she would do anything to protect him. That she would physically harm anyone who dreamed of harming him. He needed her—that was the thing. He needed her, when no one had ever needed her before. He clung to her—a habit that Peter pathologized. But she had never been anyone’s protector before, and she enjoyed the feeling, indulging it in secret, whenever they were alone.

•   •   •

Behind her, someone enters the sunroom.

Without turning, she knows who it is.

She’ll be taken to Albany today, she understands. The Peters are getting her out of the way, as usual.

That’s all right. She likes being in Albany.

She can hear her son’s voice better there.

Alice

1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975

Bear was bouncing with anticipation. Alice watched him through the sunroom glass: the day that the Blackfly Good-by was due to begin, he always stationed himself on the front lawn, eager for company to arrive. Now, he was turning cartwheels and throwing a baseball up in the air over and over again. He was singing a song Alice didn’t know, something he must have picked up at school. It struck her as funny, sometimes, that he had a whole life outside the home that she didn’t know about. He’s become such a person, lately, she said to Peter; and Peter rolled his eyes, as if he didn’t know what she meant. But he did. She knew he did.

At age eight, he was delightful, intelligent, curious, funny, and increasingly independent. It went beyond what she had hoped for; now she sometimes missed him, his constant presence next to her, his high clear voice calling Mamma eighteen times in a minute.

But Peter was thrilled. It was all that he hoped for the boy: self-reliance. And one of the best parts of all of it was the way it had brought Peter and Alice together. Now they could sit still together, watching their son like a show. They began to enjoy one another’s company in a way they hadn’t before. She was older, for one thing: Alice was twenty-six that year. A respectable age, at last.

At times, now, she had the thrilling idea that her husband was falling in love with her—for the first time, actually. She was sad for the younger Alice, the eighteen-year-old who hadn’t known anything about the world; but she was happy for herself in this moment. It was funny, she thought, how many relationships one could have with the same man, over the course of a lifetime together.

•   •   •

Peter and his father had invited more guests than ever to that year’s event: thirty-seven, by Alice’s count. Every bedroom was assigned, and every room in every outbuilding as well. Due to the number of single men and women who could not share a room, they’d even had to commandeer some of the Staff Quarters; for the staff members they’d displaced, they rented two unoccupied summer homes five miles to the south, and provided them with cars.

The first guest pulled in, and Bear ran toward the driveway to say hello. Alice, from her place in the sunroom, recognized the car immediately as her sister Delphine’s.

It had been three years since George’s death, and Delphine had continued to come alone for that time, always arriving in the same practical Buick that she staunchly refused to sell.

“Bear!” said Delphine. Through the glass, Alice could see the word as her mouth formed it. She and the boy had always had a special bond, a nice friendship. At each summer party, she treated him as an equal, brought paper and paint for him, sat with him for hours, talking with him about what he was learning in school.

Alice walked into the hallway, into the main room, where Peter and his parents were reading by the central fireplace.

“Delphine is here,” she said.

•   •   •

The crowd that year was eclectic. The usual suspects were there: the families of Peter and Alice; the Southworths, who would bring their toddler daughter, Annabel; the McLellans and their children; and also a handful of clients, and the obligatory artists.