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.
