“What happened to her?”
Barbara’s arms slackened a little around Tracy.
“My brother went missing,” she said, quietly. “And he never came back. That’s what happened to her, I think. Because I’ve seen pictures of her from when she was a teenager, and she looked okay. She looked like a different person.”
Tracy put her hand over Barbara’s. She squeezed it. She could feel herself sobering up in the cold. She had the feeling that she would be embarrassed by some of this, or all of this, tomorrow; that it would be difficult to look at Lowell and Walter and Barbara. But for now, she used what remained of the bravery the alcohol had given her to lace her fingers through Barbara’s and pull her arm more tightly around herself.
“Did you know that, about my brother?” Barbara said. “Does everyone know that?”
Tracy nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Silence.
“My mom thinks he’ll come back,” said Barbara. “But that’s a secret from my father. She only says that stuff to me. My father gets mad when she even mentions Bear.”
“Do you think he will?” said Tracy.
“No,” said Barbara. “I don’t.”
In the dark, Tracy could hear Barbara opening and closing her mouth.
“What is it?”
“I think about him a lot. I wish he hadn’t gone away,” said Barbara.
“Do you wish you could have met him?”
“No. I mean, that’s part of it,” said Barbara. “I’ve seen pictures of him and he looked like a good person. Everyone says he was.”
She paused. Tracy held her breath, not wanting to break the spell.
“When I was younger,” said Barbara, “I used to have these imaginary conversations with him. I used to pretend he still lived with us, that I had an older brother who looked out for me. Protected me from my parents when they fought, or when they got mad at me.”
Tracy nodded. She—an only child—had had similar daydreams.
“But also,” said Barbara, “if he hadn’t disappeared.”
She did not finish the sentence.
“Then what?” said Tracy.
“Then I wouldn’t have been born,” said Barbara. “That would have been better, I think.”
They were quiet for a long time.
An adult, Tracy knew, would have registered alarm, would have protested that life was worth living. But Tracy, at nearly thirteen, read the statement not as a cry for help, but as a statement of fact. And so she said nothing, and the two of them breathed together for a long time, until each one thought the other had fallen asleep.
Suddenly, Barbara spoke again.
“What time do you think it is?”
Tracy held up her watch, angling it so that it caught the light from the fire.
“Midnight,” she said.
“Shit,” Barbara whispered.
“What?”
“I have to go.”
She sat up abruptly.
Beside her, Tracy sat up as well.
“Go?” she said.
Barbara was rummaging in her backpack, feeling inside it.
“Where are you going?” Tracy asked.
“Same place I go every night.”
She pulled out a small flashlight.
“Where did you get that?”
“I brought it with me from Balsam.”
