Her mother sighs lengthily. Then she says: “She’s at a friend’s house, Marty. Someone who lives closer to the case she’s working.”
A pause. What friend of hers lives all the way up there?
“Honey,” says her mother. “Just be safe, all right?”
“I will be, Ma,” says Judy.
• • •
The room is perfectly adequate: flowered bedspread, flowered curtains, framed pictures of flowers on the wall.
She collapses into bed without taking her clothes off.
Judyta
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Three
She wakes up to the sound of knocking on the door. She wakes slowly, trying to remember where she is. Then she grabs the clock on her nightstand, terrified that she’s overslept.
It’s only six a.m. Judy is relieved—and annoyed.
She stands, still wearing her suit, now rumpled, and goes to the door. Through the peephole, she sees a middle-aged man, his hair combed into a neat side part. He wears a short-sleeved dress shirt, tan, and a brown tie. He holds an umbrella above his head.
She looks past him, into the parking lot beyond the covered walkway outside all the rooms, and sees that it’s pouring. Bad for the search, she thinks, automatically.
She opens the door, keeping the chain lock on.
“Hello,” says the man. “Are you Miss Luptack?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Bob Alcott,” says the man. “Can I trouble you for a second?”
From behind the cracked, chain-locked door, she nods.
He glances over his shoulder, into the downpour soaking the parking lot. “I wonder—you mind if I come in?”
“I do mind.”
He pauses. Explains: he’s the husband of the woman working the desk, he says, and a co-owner of the Alcott Family Inn. He’s also a history teacher at the nearby central school.
“Beatrice said you were a detective,” he says. “And that you’re working a case nearby?”
She nods.
“Is it the Van Laar girl?” he asks her.
She keeps her face still.
“It’s all right,” he says. “You don’t have to answer. But if you are, I’ve got something to tell you.”
“I’m listening,” says Judy.
“It’s about her brother,” says Bob Alcott. “Bear.”
Louise
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Three
Louise, in Wells, awaits her transfer. She’ll be sent to Albion, hours to the west, near Rochester—farther away, in fact, than Louise has ever traveled.
She can’t see the rain outside, but she can hear it. She closes her eyes. Imagines Barbara in the woods: pictures her alive, then dead. Wills herself back to the cabin called Balsam, the night before Barbara Van Laar went missing. Pictures falling asleep in her little cot there, the faint lapping of Lake Joan in the near distance, the cool sharp air of evening. Camp Emerson, she realizes with a twinge of sadness, is the place she has felt the most at home in her life.
She wishes Jesse could go there. Just one summer, she wishes he could go.
“Donnadieu,” says a voice, and Louise gets to her feet. Ready for her transfer.
Instead, the officer unlocks the cell door.
“Somebody posted bail for you,” he says.
Tracy
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Three
Back in her father’s rental in Saratoga Springs, Tracy Jewell stands in the living room, a book in her hands. She is alone for the first time in three days, her father and Donna Romano having finally gone back to the track.
Now she lowers the blinds halfway and opens the windows halfway and points all the fans in the house in her direction. The pleasant smell of new rain comes in. She prepares an elaborate snack for herself, places it on the floor beside her. Two months ago—before she had ever heard of the Van Laar Preserve, or Camp Emerson—this was the way she anticipated spending her summer. Today, it feels like a letdown.
For an hour, her book goes unread.
She’s thinking of Barbara Van Laar, running through every exchange they had, racking her brain for evidence that might help to bring her home.
• • •
There is one memory she returns to over and over. In early August—just after their return from the Survival Trip, the week before Barbara went missing—Tracy and Barbara had been walking back from a woodsmanship class to begin their free hour, when Barbara had an idea.
“Follow me,” she said.
“Where?”
But Barbara only grinned, and veered east, toward the beach.
• • •
The day was one of the most beautiful of the entire session. Barbara didn’t stop at the beach, but swerved northward, toward the woods that bordered the beach, passing the boathouse along the way. The sun came through the pines in golden shafts, casting spotlights here and there across the ground. At a certain point, Tracy understood where they were going. Under normal circumstances she would have felt afraid—she was typically a follower of rules—but at Camp Emerson, under the influence of Barbara, she had begun to feel reckless.
At the conclusion of their brief, silent hike, they were facing a parking area, full of cars; beyond it, the southern wing of Self-Reliance. A side door was propped slightly open; through it strode a maid in uniform, wheeling a cart of laundry around a corner, out of sight.
