The God of the Woods - Chapter 3 - Read Online & PDF

III

When Lost

Tracy

he was afraid to use the word, to even think it, but sometimes Tracy feltS like she was falling in love with Barbara Van Laar.

She was fascinated by the details of Barbara’s face and body, her eyes— long-lashed and perennially sleepy—and the shape of her strong legs, and the nails she bit down to nothing, and the very light hair of her forearms and thighs, which looked like spun gold in the sunlight, and which emphasized the artificial black of her hair. If she caught Tracy staring—which she must have—she said nothing, only smiled vaguely in her direction, as if accustomed to being the recipient of such gazes.

More important: Barbara was the first friend she’d ever had who seemed to like Tracy as much as Tracy liked her. She told Tracy she was funny, for one thing: she laughed loudly and often at things that Tracy said, drawing interested gazes from those around them. She told Tracy she was smart. She harbored a disdain for the mainstream without disdaining the people who partook in it. Indeed, she was the least judgmental person Tracy had ever met.

Barbara’s position at Camp Emerson was an interesting one: she had the glamour of an outsider, that summer being her first at camp, and yet she was also an insider in ways the rest of them could never be. She had frequented

the grounds in the off-season; she had seen into closets and back rooms and kitchens that were off-limits to other campers.

Most intriguingly, she was apparently quite close with T.J. Hewitt, the camp director, who was essentially a mystery to every other camper on-site.

Yes, she led them all in outdoorsmanship lessons; but even then she was serious and standoffish. The only things Tracy knew about her personal life centered on her history on the grounds. She was the daughter of the former longtime director of the camp, Vic Hewitt, a legend whose likeness hung in a place of prominence in the commissary. Said to be ill in some way. Other than this fact, they knew nothing at all about T.J.; the counselors revered her, never gossiped about her. She seemed more like a mascot than a living person: someone to be greatly respected, but never spoken to directly.

The first time, therefore, that Tracy passed T.J. while walking with Barbara, she was surprised to hear her new friend call out the director’s name

brightly.

“What’s happening?” Barbara said.

Unlike everyone else on the premises, T.J. did not wear a uniform. Instead she wore cutoffs—corduroy or jean—and a T-shirt or a plaid flannel, and high socks, and brown Danner hiking boots laced tightly to the top. On her head was a hairstyle so laughably askew that on anyone else it would have been ridiculed. But on T.J., the cut seemed simply to indicate a lack of concern for earthly matters. It functioned, like a monk’s tonsure, to separate her from the laypeople at the camp.

She’d been kneeling before one of the small bridges that spanned the creek separating the boys’ cabins from the girls’. She was hammering a row of nails with frightening speed. Now she looked up and frowned.

“Where’re you supposed to be?” she said.

“Can’t remember!” said Barbara. Teasing. She turned to Tracy. “Can you, Tracy?”

“Lunch,” Tracy said quickly. “We’re walking to lunch right now.”

“Ah, that’s right. Sorry, T.J., I’m new here.” Barbara grinned. T.J. didn’t.

But it was clear she was fighting a smile.

“Get out of my hair,” she said, and, raising her hammer in the air again, turned back to her work.

They continued on their way. At a certain point Barbara noticed Tracy’s expression: wide-eyed, waiting for an explanation.

“What?” she said.

Tracy glanced back over her shoulder.

“Oh, T.J.?” said Barbara. “She’s harmless. I don’t know why everyone’s so intimidated by her.”

“What does she do the rest of the year?” asked Tracy.

“Takes care of her dad. Takes care of the grounds. Comes to stay with me in Albany when my parents have to go someplace.”

Tracy looked at her. “She—babysits you?” She couldn’t imagine it. The long silences, she thought, would be unbearable.

Barbara laughed. “I wouldn’t call it that. She just stays with me, makes sure I stay out of trouble. The Hewitts are like family.”

Tracy shrugged. “If you say so,” she said.

• • •

When Tracy was not with Barbara, she was making attempts to learn about her. For one thing, she was becoming increasingly curious about her history.

If her bunkmates knew the full story of Barbara’s brother’s disappearance, the arrival of Barbara herself had precipitated a sort of respectful silence on the matter.

Only once was Tracy privy to anything of substance.

Halfway through the summer, she was walking back from the washroom on a break when she came across Lowell Cargill, the other object of her affection, seated at a picnic table. His face was obscured by a newspaper.

Above the fold, the date: July 13, 1975. Below the date, a man’s face gazed toward the viewer: bespectacled, balding, unsmiling. This, she ascertained from the caption, was Jacob Sluiter—known to the campers as Slitter. She had heard whispers in the dark about him, knew there to be some

rumored connection between Slitter and Bear Van Laar; but the details to that point had eluded Tracy.

As nonchalantly as possible, she sat at a different table, facing the paper.

She squinted in the article’s direction, attempting to make out details. In moments like these, she regretted not wearing her glasses. SIGHTING REPORTED, said the headline. And beneath it, large words like dangerous

and armed.

“Nervous?”

Tracy flinched.

Lowell Cargill was regarding her over the top of the paper in his hands.

“Says here he might be making his way northward, toward his old hunting grounds,” said Lowell, casually.

He folded the paper. Crossed one leg over the other, ankle to knee.

Then, seeing Tracy’s face, he added: “Don’t be scared. He was all the way down at Fishkill when he got out. If he’s walking, he wouldn’t be in this area yet. And I bet they find him before he gets here.”

He paused.

“Unless he hitchhiked,” he added, uncertainly. “But who would pick him up?”

“Where did you get that paper?” Tracy asked.

“From the canteen,” said Lowell. “They sell papers there every day. Most people just don’t want ’em.”

I do, thought Tracy. At home, she liked reading the daily paper with her mother. And she saw it as further evidence of her compatibility with Lowell Cargill that he, too, read the newspaper: a quality she considered unusual in a boy his age.

Abruptly, Lowell stood up and stretched his arms into the air, revealing a slice of midriff that thrilled her.

“You can have this if you want,” said Lowell. “I’m done with it.”

She took it into her hands—knowing without a doubt that she would keep it in her trunk for the rest of the session, a sort of holy relic, sanctified by Lowell Cargill’s touch.

The PA system crackled to life then, announcing the end of free hour, and Lowell turned away.

Then, as if remembering something, he turned. “Hey,” he said. “Barbara said you’re a good singer. Do you want to sing with me sometime?”

Tracy felt all the blood in her body leave her head.

Lowell furrowed his brow. “It’s okay if you don’t,” he said. “I was just wondering. I’m trying to learn how to harmonize.”

He began walking.

Tracy watched the back of him, cursing herself for her cowardice. And then, when he was ten strides away, she willed herself to speak. “I will,” she said. And then again, louder.

“Right on,” said Lowell. “I’ll find you.”

• • •

On her top bunk, after dinner and before lights-out, Tracy folded the front page of The Saratogian into a small square, and read the article.

From it, she learned the full story of Jacob Sluiter. He was, she read, a notorious killer who had haunted the Adirondack Park just over a decade prior. Sluiter was accused of and prosecuted for eleven murders, all of which took place between 1960 and 1964, the year in which he was finally apprehended. Most of these killings took place at campgrounds or remote cabins. The victims—couples, sometimes single women—were bound and stabbed; no firearms were used. What allowed Sluiter to elude capture for so long was his deep knowledge of woodcraft, forged over the course of a childhood spent in rural poverty. He could trap and fish with great skill.

During each of the four winters he was on the lam, Sluiter moved from unoccupied cabin to unoccupied cabin, stealing canned goods and other provisions left behind by summer people; from May to September, when the region became more populated and owners returned to their cabins, he camped out in the wilderness. He might have gone on this way forever if not for a stroke of bad luck: a cottage he assumed to be empty for winter was, in fact, the site of its owners’ annual Christmas celebration. Pulling into the

driveway, the owner spotted a fire in the fireplace. Before Sluiter could get to his gun, the owner was inside, on top of him.

Jacob Sluiter was tied to a chair while the authorities were called. On December 23, 1964, he was captured at last.

He confessed to nothing. He maintained his innocence, despite the evidence that damned him irreversibly: possessions from victims among his belongings; his fingerprints at all the crime scenes; testimony from two siblings about sadistic tendencies; and, at last, a positive visual identification from one survivor of an attempted homicide. Still, Sluiter denied it. His lack of transparency, wrote the reporter, led to speculation that Sluiter may have been responsible for even more homicides than those he was accused of.

Certain cases involving persons who’d gone missing while out hiking—who were formerly considered to have simply gotten lost—were reopened.

Including Bear Van Laar’s? Tracy wondered. This was the frightening rumor she’d heard her first night at camp.

The article went on: ten years after Jacob Sluiter’s capture and sentencing —life in prison, without parole—he feigned illness to oblige a transfer to a lower-security prison. And three weeks ago, Jacob Sluiter escaped that prison, over two hundred miles south of Camp Emerson. The issue of The Saratogian she held was published in his fourth week of being on the lam; the headline reported a possible sighting near Schoharie, New York.

To the side of the article there was a diagram, a sort of map that displayed the location of Sluiter’s known killings, and also of his previous apprehension. And Tracy couldn’t help but notice two of the several reference points the artist had included on the map. One was the town of Shattuck, five miles from Camp Emerson. And the other was the Van Laar Preserve itself. Tracy used her finger, and the key, to judge the distance from where they were to where Sluiter’s arrest had been. Twenty miles, or thirty at the most. She traced a path from Camp Emerson, to the arrest, to the closest killing, also twenty or thirty miles away, and in the process produced a neat isosceles triangle, an eastward-pointing arrow with Camp Emerson as its tip.

Tracy

owell Cargill, it turned out, was more than just talk. An excruciatingL week went by, and then he arrived on Balsam’s porch—guitar case in hand—and knocked on the door. One of the Melissas answered, confused.

When he asked for Tracy, her mouth fell open further.

Lowell’s suggestion was that they go to the amphitheater to practice, and this was how Tracy found herself following him silently across the grounds of the camp. She tried and failed to think of something to say to him. But Lowell seemed comfortable not talking—until they arrived at their destination. Then he sat down on a stump, opened his guitar case.

One thing Tracy had noticed, the first time she heard Lowell sing, was that he evinced no self-consciousness at all—but really sang, his eyes closing sometimes, as if blocking out the rest of the world.

Today was no different. He began the same Ian & Sylvia song he had sung before—the one that Tracy knew.

Facing Lowell now, Tracy was conflicted: a large part of her was struggling not to burst into hysterical giggles, and she began to dig her fingernails into her own palm to prevent them. But another part of her found Lowell’s passion inspiring, even attractive. His earnest face, beautifully sculpted, moving in agitated ways: it was perhaps the most erotic thing that Tracy, at twelve, had ever witnessed.

“Okay,” said Lowell, when he had sung the song through one time. “Now

I’ll teach it to you.”

“I know it already,” Tracy said.

For an hour, they rehearsed—Tracy teaching him, this time, how to hold his note while she held hers. She suddenly found herself missing her mother —a track rat, an exercise rider, tomboyish and forthright, tall, with red hair and freckles like Tracy. She ate her food messily, hunched over her plate, and laughed loudly, and walked with her knees and elbows out, loose-limbed, jangling as she went, her gait reminding Tracy somehow of a marionette’s.

Her only moments of gracefulness were on horseback. In the year following her parents’ divorce, most of Tracy’s anger had been directed at her mother— whose vicinity made her an easier target. But now, in her mind, Tracy thanked her for this one thing: teaching her daughter to harmonize.

• • •

That night, Tracy floated back to her cabin like a ghost. Upon entering, she was met with the inquisitive gaze of Barbara, who must have heard where Tracy had been.

She sat down next to Barbara on the lower bunk and gazed at the floor.

“What happened?” she whispered.

Quietly, Tracy told her.

It was the first time in her life that she felt she had a really good story to tell. One in which she—Tracy Jewell—was the protagonist, the ingenue.

Barbara, next to her, was nodding sagely as she spoke.

“Did he say he wanted to meet again?” asked Barbara.

“Yes,” said Tracy.

Barbara thought. “Well, he likes you,” she said. “That much is obvious.”

It was strange, but Tracy knew that she was correct. There was no doubt

about it: Lowell Cargill liked her.

“What happens next?” Tracy asked her.

She shrugged. “Depends how experienced he is,” said Barbara. “Maybe he’ll ask you to the dance. Or maybe, next time you play together, he’ll try it

with you.”

Try what, Tracy wondered—though a part of her knew.

“You’re not scared, are you?” Barbara asked.

“No,” Tracy said. “I’m not scared.”

She was petrified.

A long silence ensued.

“Do you ever listen to music?” Barbara asked.

She did—but not any music she’d confess to Barbara. She listened to her mother’s music, or to bands and boys who could be found on the cover of Tiger Beat.

Barbara continued without waiting. “Kissing someone—someone you want to kiss, I mean—is like living inside the best song you ever heard. It’s the same feeling.”

• • •

Later, atop her bunk, Tracy took out her journal and enumerated everything she knew about sex.

What parts of the anatomy it involved: this was at the top of the list.

What actually happened between those parts: she knew the technicalities, but couldn’t quite grasp the mechanics.

She turned her face to the window: the moon was nearly full.

That’s the last thing she remembered seeing before they were woken, in the morning, by the sound of an air horn.

“Survival Trip,” whispered one of the Melissas. All around Tracy, the campers of Balsam sprang into motion.

Barbara, on the bottom bunk, was the first one dressed and out the door.

Tracy

racy has known for one hour that Barbara is missing. So far, she has notT had to lie.

She’s been asked the following two questions, several times: Do you know where she is? Did you hear her leave? To both of them, Tracy can safely answer, No.

Now, with the counselors pulled away to search, the CITs have been tasked with keeping everyone to their routine. On the walk to the commissary, Tracy forms a plan. She lets herself lag at the back of the group, then ducks behind a building. Waits, breathing, until her cabinmates are out of sight.

She needs to go someplace. She thinks it will be a quick trip, just a lark— to see if she can rule out the place she believes Barbara might have gone. She makes a promise to herself: if she doesn’t find Barbara there, she’ll confess to the authorities everything she knows.

It’s not a decision she makes lightly. Because Barbara swore Tracy to secrecy. And the fact that she entrusted Tracy—Tracy!—with such an important secret makes her loath to break Barbara’s confidence so readily.

• • •

She knows where it is that Barbara goes each night.

Although Barbara will tell Tracy nothing about her boyfriend, she did tell her once about their meeting place: an observer’s cabin at the peak of Hunt Mountain, something formerly occupied by a string of men whose job it was to keep watch for wildfires in the surrounding area. Next to it is a fire tower that affords an even better view. Both structures have gone unoccupied lately due to staffing shortages. But both are convenient as shelters from bad weather. Or as places to meet in secret.

“At night?” Tracy whispered, incredulously. And Barbara laughed.

“Do you know how many times I’ve climbed that hill?” she said. “I could do it in my sleep.”

“But how long does it take you to get there? And how do you see?” said Tracy.

“Half an hour. I run it. And I bring this.” Barbara glanced around. Then she plunged a hand between the top of her mattress and the bed frame. She produced a flashlight—her own, apparently, separate from the one they were to use on bathroom visits overnight.

• • •

Tracy’s theory, today, is that Barbara perhaps fell asleep there; and she wants to rule out this possibility. She believes she can climb up and down Hunt Mountain in an hour and a half. She’ll be back in time for her morning activity—hopefully with news of Barbara, or maybe even with Barbara herself. She’ll get in trouble, she knows, but she doesn’t care. Barbara is the only reason she likes camp, anyway.

From behind the Staff Quarters she sets off, with purpose, toward the closest woods: the thicker forest that stands between Camp Emerson and Route 29, hoping to remain unseen on her way.

No such luck: within twenty seconds she spies Lee Towson, one of the cooks. Very handsome. Said to be friends with Louise.

He’s carrying two bags of garbage, and as he walks he rocks his feet from heel to toe so carefully that he makes no noise at all. Tracy jumps, startled, when she sees him, and the movement draws his eye.

For a moment, they stand and stare at one another. Then Tracy holds up one finger to her lips, a pleading expression on her face, and Lee nods and continues on his way.

• • •

August in the Adirondacks does not feel like August to Tracy. On Long Island, she imagines, it’s swelteringly hot. Here, in the woods, it’s pleasant. It feels impossible to become thirsty: the air itself feels full of cool water, velvety on the skin. Tracy walks, invigorated, careful to stay just inside the tree line. She tries to keep the buildings of Camp Emerson visible to her right.

Five minutes go by in this way, and then she stops short. There ahead of her is the driveway that stretches from Route 29 to Self-Reliance. She’ll have to cross it to continue, but she can’t: a slow line of police cars is moving past her. She stands in the dim forest, waiting.

Four cars drive by, then five.

Tentatively, she peers out from behind a tree until it’s safe to cross the road. Then she enters the woods to the north.

• • •

Now, there is no edge to follow.

On her right, a long tract of forest stretches toward Self-Reliance; on her left, another one stretches toward Route 29. She can see the peak of Hunt Mountain through the top of some nearby trees. If she walks in a straight line, she’ll reach it in ten minutes.

Time passes. The ground descends into a little valley, and she loses sight of the mountain; but she tells herself that if she keeps the sun on her right, she’ll be fine. The problem is that it’s becoming difficult to tell. The woods themselves are becoming thicker, closing in. The undergrowth, sparse near the driveway, has become nearly impassable in places. Already, she has cuts on her shins and calves.

Up ahead, Tracy can see that the land will rise again, and this reassures her: it makes sense to her that there would be an incline on the approach to Hunt Mountain. Soon, surely, she’ll catch sight of the peak again.

She doesn’t even have a watch. Later, she will understand how foolish she was, how clearly disrespectful of those woods—to think she could enter them so cavalierly, without a watch or compass, without long pants or even water, disregarding every single thing that T.J. Hewitt has painstakingly taught them over the course of the summer so far. But at nearly thirteen, Tracy swings wildly between self-abasement and overconfidence. There is no middle ground.

Tracy begins counting in her head to determine how much time has passed. One-Mississippi, et cetera, until at least ten minutes have gone by with no sight of Hunt Mountain, and no sight of the sun.

Only then does Tracy let herself acknowledge what she’s done. The great mistake she’s made.

She sits down—too late now. She’s covered too much ground. Truly, she’s been lost for half a mile.

She sits down regardless, hearing in her mind the voice of that counselor, the greeter, the first person who ever spoke to her on this land.

She yells.

Judyta

udyta Luptack, born and raised in Schenectady, was for many years neverJ the first at anything. In her own family, she was third, behind two brothers, ahead of another. Academically, she was generally in the middle of the pack. When, in gym class, she was asked to run a race, she was usually toward the front. But she never won.

Therefore, when the Times Union published that article, she was met with an unfamiliar feeling. Was it pride? Not exactly. More like surprise.

“Nation’s First Class of Female State Troopers Graduates at Albany,” read the headline. And there below was a picture of the four of them: Cindy and Linda and Niecy and her—Judyta Luptack, 21, said the caption.

Her father turned to her mother. “Well, if one of them had to make the papers,” he said, “I’m glad it was for this.” And that was all that anyone said about it after that, except her brother Leonard, who began referring to her as The Nation’s First, instead of by her given name.

• • •

Five years has passed since that time, and Judy—now twenty-six—has done well. Each year, she has exceeded the benchmarks set for her. She makes good clear reports; good arrests. She is a go-getter, not a slug. (According to her former sergeant, all troopers fall into one of these two categories.) And

last year, after some particularly impressive work, she was recommended for promotion to the New York State Bureau of Criminal Investigation, making her the first female investigator in the state.

• • •

Now The Nation’s First, having recently completed her requisite months of training with the BCI, rides alongside a senior investigator on the New York State Thruway. His name is Denny Hayes, and he seems—without ever directly mentioning it—to have appointed himself Judy’s mentor. As such, he has accompanied her each workday for the past two weeks. It does not escape her that she’s not the only new investigator in the BCI. But all the others are, of course, men.

In the passenger’s seat, Judy crosses and then uncrosses her legs, uncertain which better demonstrates a completely asexual nature. (She is not, in fact, asexual; but she understands that to be thought of as such would be convenient in her line of work.) At least, in plain clothes, she can wear pants now.

Next to her, Denny Hayes is whistling. He whistles a great deal. She recognizes his type: early forties, a father, a former athlete, someone well- liked in high school.

“The Van Laar Preserve,” says Denny, in between whistled tunes. “This’ll be interesting.”

This morning, they were on their way to conduct interviews relating to a larceny case in Long Lake when a call came over the radio: a missing thirteen-year-old girl at a remote compound in the mountains near the small town of Shattuck. Their car was the closest to Shattuck, so they’ll be the first BCI investigators to respond.

“You familiar with the Van Laar family?” Denny asks.

She’s heard the name, she says. (She hasn’t.) “Remember a news story about a boy who disappeared in the mountains?

Twelve or fourteen years ago, this was,” says Hayes.

Judy would have been a child. But reminding people of her youth seems sometimes to offend them, and so she says, “Yes, I think so.”

“Well, the interesting thing there is,” says Hayes, “they caught the guy who killed that little boy. Sick fellow. But he’s dead now. So, another kid goes missing from the same place. Who dunnit this time?” He looks at Judy and winks, as if telling a joke.

• • •

The land they pass becomes more and more rural. With her appointment to the BCI, Judy has been transferred to Troop B, headquartered in the Adirondacks at Ray Brook. This would be fine—preferable, even—but for the fact that Judy, two weeks into her new position, is still living with her parents in Schenectady; and this means a daily commute that borders on the impossible.

It’s two hours from her house to Ray Brook. But the transfer was the only way she could break in as an investigator, she has explained—repeatedly—to her parents. One day soon, she’ll convince them that she should find her own place, closer to work; but none of Judy’s siblings have ever moved out prior to marriage, and so for now Judy thinks it best not to rock the boat. For fourteen days, instead, she has set her alarm for four a.m., and dealt with the howls of her brothers when the beeping begins at that time.

“Here we are,” says Hayes.

They pull down a long driveway. On the left is a group of old farm buildings, seemingly no longer in use. A sloping lawn breaks into view, and suddenly they’re facing a house that looks like something out of one of her history textbooks in school.

She can feel Hayes’s sideways gaze on her as they pull in. Reading her.

What Hayes doesn’t know is that Judy is used to being around rich people.

Starting at twelve years old, she worked—first off the books and then on—at the Iroquois Golf Club, where her father is still head of the janitorial staff.

She washed dishes and then bused tables and then waited tables. Even today she sometimes gets a call from Chick Janowicz, the general manager, to

cover a shift when someone is out sick. And every December she works the elaborate Christmas party for cash. Everyone in the Luptack family does: even her mother.

Hayes parks the car at an odd angle on the lawn. A few local troopers are already on-site. Four EnCon vehicles are present too, unoccupied: forest rangers, probably already out in the woods, conducting an initial search.

Hayes regards them for a beat. Then asks: “What’s your guess?”

Judy looks at him.

“Take a guess. About what happened to the girl.”

“Oh,” says Judy. “I’m not sure.”

“Runaway’s my guess,” says Hayes. “Girl this age goes missing it’s

almost always a runaway.”

Judy is silent.

“She’s prob’ly got her thumb out on a back road as we speak. Just hope we find her before a bad guy does,” says Hayes.

Then, without waiting for Judy, he gets out and sets off in the direction of the nearest trooper, a portly man with sandy eyebrows, and reaches for a handshake.

• • •

Judy hesitates. She gets out, turns in a slow circle, taking in the house, the lake on its far side, the woods all around. To the south is some sort of organization, a children’s school or camp: she can hear high-pitched shrieks and laughter coming from that direction.

When Denny Hayes returns, he gives her the facts of the case.

It’s the Van Laars’ daughter who’s missing, he says. Thirteen-year-old girl from the same family whose son went missing over a decade before.

Her name, says Hayes, is Barbara Van Laar; she was attending the camp on the grounds; she was last seen asleep in a bunk in her cabin the night before.

The brief statements the troopers have gotten have yielded no theories or leads. Everyone seems surprised by her disappearance. No one has any idea

where she might have gone.

Complicating everything, he says, is the fact that another camper is now missing: Barbara’s bunkmate, a girl named Tracy Jewell, who has no connection to the family. This one was last seen just a couple of hours prior, on a walk from the cabin to the commissary for breakfast. Her parents have been alerted; they’re driving this way.

In light of these two disappearances, all the campers are now gathered in the Great Hall, with two troopers assigned to that post. Their parents are being called, one set after another, and instructed to come and retrieve their children. But with ninety-one families and only two landlines, the process is taking a good deal of time. In the meantime, no one is allowed into or out of the Great Hall without showing ID. If necessary, any campers whose parents can’t reach Camp Emerson today will sleep there, all together, overnight.

“You know the family’s against it?” says Hayes.

“Against what?”

“Having the parents come to pick the campers up. Two kids gone missing, two separate incidents. Including their own daughter. And they’re talking about finishing the session. Not wanting to cause any unnecessary alarm.”

• • •

Judy thought she’d be shadowing Hayes for the day, but she ascertains quickly that his plan is to split up, get statements separately. Cover more territory that way.

“You can bring people into the car to conduct interviews,” he says. “For privacy.” Then he points down toward the camp. “See that building in the far distance? Long flat building? Trooper I spoke to says there’s a good place for interviews in there. Says the Van Laar parents are already down there. That’s

where I’ll be, if you need me.”

He turns back to her. Winks.

“But you won’t need me. Right?”

“Sure,” says Judy. Hayes pats her once on the back. Already she is growing very weary of the casual touch of the men around her, even when—

as in Hayes’s case—it seems more paternal than lascivious. He inclines his head toward her.

“Listen, honey,” he says, in a whisper. “I’ll handle the tough stuff. The Van Laar girl’s friends and counselors. The parents—if there’s anyone to watch, it’s them. You’re in charge of the folks up here at the house. The minor players, you know what I mean? Don’t be nervous.”

She wants, badly, to step sideways. To move far away from him. Instead she nods.

“You remember what to do? You remember your training?”

Judy nods.

“Good luck,” says Hayes, and strides down the hill toward the summer camp.

• • •

Outside the house called Self-Reliance, Judy Luptack contemplates the iron knocker, in the shape of a fly. Three times, she lifts and drops its thorax, feeling oddly squeamish about touching it.

After a moment a woman comes to the door. A maid, perhaps.

The woman takes her in for a beat before speaking. “May I help you?”

Judy speaks aloud, for the first time, the words she has been trained to say: “I’m Investigator Judyta Luptack. I’m here to assist in the search for Barbara Van Laar.”

• • •

Inside the main room, a dozen people stand and sit in small groups. They aren’t like the rich people she knew from her work at the golf club—those were generally older men and women who dressed in stiff formal clothes and sat up very straight in their chairs.

The people here, on the other hand, are sprawled out in pajamas and robes.

Judy gets the feeling that they’re in no hurry to change. Two of the women wear silk nightgowns, and through them she can distinctly see the outline of

their breasts. Two young girls—more hired help—move quietly about, picking up the remnants of a party.

Judy looks down at her notepad, busying herself, steeling herself for her first approach.

She’s already decided who it will be: an older man who comes closest to reminding her of one of the members at the Iroquois Golf Club. He’s white- haired and tall and seated on a low bench near the front door, tying up a sturdy pair of hiking boots. Next to him is a woman who might be his wife.

Judy walks toward them, stands before them, clears her throat. The room feels very quiet to her. Conversations have stopped.

The couple doesn’t hear her, or they don’t care.

“Excuse me, sir?” says Judy—and feels suddenly transported back to her

work at the club.

Slowly, the man looks up.

“May I ask you a few questions?” she says.

Jacob

t dawn, walking just inside the tree line that borders the Northway, heA had reached a stream and felt the inexplicable urge to follow it to its beginning. Some memory awoke in him that felt almost ancestral: he knew this stream, though he didn’t know how.

Jacob does not believe in any god except himself. He’s superstitious, though, inclined to subscribe to the idea that coincidence does not exist, that when one encounters the unexpected or uncanny it’s important to spend a few extra minutes considering the why.

Why, he wondered, had he come across this stream in the middle of his journey north? Why did it look so familiar to him? In the near-light, he considered options: it was time to bed down for the day, but the stream drew him forcefully into the woods. What harm, he thought, in following for a while?

• • •

Some hours commenced then of walking and wading and sinking slightly, at times, into the marshy ground. His shoes became muddy, soaked through; he’d have to swap them out for a stranger’s as soon as he could.

The woods were growing thinner: through the last remaining trees before him, he could see a county road crossing his path. The stream he’d been

following disappeared into a culvert.

He waited awhile, and then—seeing no cars—he darted across the road, found the culvert on the other side, and continued.

There, just beyond him: a series of small cabins, one after another, moving away from him in two lines that framed the little stream. Here and there, small bridges crossed it. To his left were larger buildings; beyond them, a hill.

In an instant, he understood why he was drawn to the water, and why he

had followed it this far.

He’d been to this place before.

Judyta

udy Luptack, having asked the gentleman before her for a few minutes ofJ his time, is waiting for a response.

She begins again. “My name is Investigator Luptack. I’m here to help locate Barbara. May I—”

“I’m afraid not,” the man says. And he turns his back to her. Looks out the window, toward the trees.

For a moment, she stands frozen, uncertain what to do. Old instincts instruct her to defer to him—this man she could have served at the golf club.

New ones say to be direct.

“Sir?” she says. “It will only take a moment. Just a few questions.”

“I’ll wait for your sergeant,” says the man. “I don’t like repeating myself.”

“There’s no—” Judy begins. Sergeant is not the word for the person above her in the BCI: it’s senior investigator. But she doesn’t feel like telling Denny Hayes, who occupies that role, that she’s failing already.

Instead she says, simply, “Please.”

Upon hearing the word—the abasement in her voice—the man’s shoulders

drop slightly. He regards her.

“Very well,” he says. “Briefly.”

“We can go to my car.”

“We can go to the kitchen,” says the man.

• • •

The kitchen is enormous. The elderly couple sit across from her at a large table. The husband, arms and legs crossed, leans back in his chair.

Judy clutches the pad in her hands. She doesn’t want to put it on the table; she doesn’t want either of them to read it upside down.

“Name?” she begins.

“Peter Wallingford Van Laar the Second,” says the man.

“Date of birth?” says Judy.

The man raises an eyebrow.

“February twenty-third, 1898.”

Judy notes these facts in the lined pad. And adds to them: Demeanor: tense.

“What’s your relation to the victim?” Judy asks.

“Victim?”

“To Miss Van Laar,” says Judy.

“I would appreciate it if you’d refrain from referring to my granddaughter

as a victim,” says the man.

Judy flushes. He’s correct.

“There’s your answer, anyway,” says Mr. Van Laar. “I’m her grandfather.

This is her grandmother,” he says, inclining his head toward his wife. “Mrs.

Helen Van Laar. Date of birth May the third, 1898.”

These facts, Judy dutifully notes as well.

Then she pauses, waiting for her training to kick in.

“Can you both tell me about your day today? What time you woke up, what you did after that?”

The man sighs heavily. He’s the sort of person from whom disapproval radiates nearly autonomically. He folds his hands on the table.

“Miss . . .” he says.

“Luptack.”

Investigator Luptack, thinks Judy.

“Miss Luptack, you look very young,” says Mr. Van Laar. His wife glances at him swiftly. “You might be—twenty years old? Twenty-two?”

He waits. Twenty-six, thinks Judy. She doesn’t say it.

“My guess is you have not been doing this work very long,” says Mr. Van Laar. “Allow me to assist you.”

“Peter,” says his wife—the first word she has spoken—but her husband holds one hand out in her direction, and she doesn’t continue.

“Our granddaughter has run away,” he says. “The reason I know this is because she has threatened to run away nearly every day for two years.

Increasingly, ‘appeasing Barbara,’ ‘not upsetting Barbara,’ has become nearly the only topic of conversation in my son’s household. She’s a thirteen- year-old girl acting the way that most thirteen-year-old girls act. Only

worse.”

He pauses. Coughs.

“Our whereabouts this morning are not important pieces of the puzzle you’re trying to solve. What you and your people need to be doing is sending a large search party into those woods. Because they’re the only danger to Barbara in this moment, aside from Barbara herself.”

He stands up abruptly, then looks down at his wife, waiting for her to follow suit. More tentatively, she does.

“Now,” says Mr. Van Laar. “That’s where I’m heading, with some dogs.

That’s where I was heading when you detained me. Jot that down in your notebook. In case any of your superiors are looking for me.” He walks out of the room. His wife looks at Judy for a moment before following, her expression inscrutable.

“Sir,” says Judy. The word comes out before she knows what she’ll say

next.

He waits. “What is it?”

“It’s just—in light of your grandson’s disappearance,” says Judy. “It seems as if we should treat Barbara’s with the same care.”

The man’s expression changes completely. He has been annoyed with the conversation; now he’s enraged. He opens his mouth to speak, and Judy is reminded of an animal baring its teeth.

“Don’t talk about my grandson,” says Mr. Van Laar. “Don’t even speak his name.”

He leaves. His wife follows.

Judy sits for a moment, alone in the large kitchen. It looks as if a party took place the night before. Containers of food are open on the counter, things that should have been refrigerated. Cold salads, chocolaty desserts.

Judy looks down at her notepad. She crosses out the word tense.

Demeanor: hostile, she writes.

A stack of flatware in the sink, precariously arranged, shifts suddenly, and the noise bounces sharply off the walls.

Judy doesn’t flinch. The noise of kitchens generally comforts her.

She’s thinking about Mr. Van Laar’s disproportionate reaction to her mention of his grandson. The hate in his eyes, the flash of his yellowing teeth. She’d seen that same expression on someone else.

Now it returns to her: Mrs. Charles Hanover, she thinks. At a Christmas party at the golf club several years ago, she had rounded a quiet corner to find Mrs. Hanover methodically going through the pockets of furs in the coatroom. Now and then she produced something, examined it, and put it into her own purse. Judy watched, stunned, until Mrs. Hanover turned and caught her eye. Then she smiled, found her own coat, put it on, and walked out.

Judy had rushed to the kitchen to find Chick Janowicz, the GM, who raked his hands over his cheeks and stood looking at the floor for a few beats. Then he nodded, departed, resigned to his fate.

From the kitchen, Judy had heard the howls of indignation all the way down the hall. Then the swinging door flew open and there were the Hanovers, the wife in the lead, an angry finger pointing in Judy’s direction, the expression on her face exactly the same as Mr. Van Laar’s had been at the mention of his grandson.

“You have no idea what the hell you saw,” Mrs. Hanover was saying to

Judy. “You little—”

“Paulette,” her husband said warningly.

Mr. Janowicz had to threaten to call the police before Mrs. Hanover finally turned out the contents of her purse. Inside it were five wallets and two cigarette cases. Though the Hanovers were banished from the club, Paulette Hanover was never reported to the law.

Rich people, thought Judy—she thought this then, and she thinks it now— generally become most enraged when they sense they’re about to be held accountable for their wrongs.

Tracy

he learns, that day, the answer to the question she has had since the startS of camp.

What are they actually supposed to yell when lost? Their instructions

stopped short of the answer.

As it turns out, Tracy yells: I’M LOST.

She yells this continuously, in a kind of hysterical chant; and then, remembering that she is supposed to conserve her voice, she pauses for longer intervals.

At first, shouting this ridiculous phrase, she seethes with self-loathing and embarrassment, certain that she’s only a stone’s throw from the edge of the woods, certain that some ten-year-old camper will at any moment come wandering over in his uniform, looking scornful, pointing in the direction of the camp. Still, she continues to shout it, resigned to her fate. Better to get it over with, she thinks.

• • •

She’s been thirsty for a while. Now she’s growing hungry. This alone convinces her that perhaps too much time has passed. And is the light around her growing dimmer? Impossible, she thinks. It was early morning when she

struck out. But in the woods, time seems to move strangely. She’s entered a different reality from the one she knew.

“I’m lost,” Tracy yells, again and again.

The world around her is blurry and green. She curses herself for her vanity, for being too proud to wear the glasses she was prescribed this year.

This is no longer an adventure. Real fear has settled in, finally, and she screams without words. Now, she does not say “I’m lost” or “Help”; instead she simply hollers, guttural primal howls that are punctuated, every so often, with “Mom, Dad”—a surprise to her. Tracy thinks of herself as independent, even at her age. But here she is, thirsty, hungry, crying, screaming for her parents, who don’t even speak to one another anymore.

• • •

After a while of carrying on like this, Tracy freezes in the middle of a howl to listen with her whole body. She holds her breath. Hears what sounds like

footsteps.

She waits for a bit.

“Hello?” she says.

For a moment, nothing; and then she hears the noise again.

“Hello?”

Tracy stands up from her spot on the ground. She turns slowly. Notices, at last, a face peering back at her from behind a tree.

Then someone steps into view.

Louise

ehind the stage in the Great Hall are three makeshift dressing rooms, aB wardrobe, and a doorway to the outside. For the time being, the state troopers who arrived first on the scene have made the whole hall their command post, with the backstage area apparently serving as interrogation rooms.

Inside the first dressing room—the smallest—Louise sits alone in a vinyl chair.

• • •

One hour ago, her CIT—having abruptly noticed the absence of yet another camper of theirs—tore wild-eyed through the grounds of the camp, hollering for Louise, finding her on her walk back to the Director’s Cabin from Staff Quarters.

“Tracy’s missing too!” Annabel said, breathless—and a nearby trooper said, “Who?”

In short order, the two of them were being walked by a phalanx of policemen toward the Great Hall.

Over and over again, on that walk, Louise had tried to catch Annabel’s eye. Remember, she wanted to tell her, with her gaze. Remember your promise.

But Annabel wouldn’t meet her gaze.

• • •

Now Annabel is in the dressing room next to Louise’s. Through the thin wall that separates them, Louise can hear muffled sounds she thinks might be sobs.

She can also hear the angry voice of a different woman, and a man: Mr. and Mrs. Southworth, she surmises. Annabel’s parents. Guests, this week, of the Van Laars.

A light tap on Louise’s door, and then it swings open before she can respond.

A man walks in, fortyish, balding. He stops and stares at her a moment, as if realizing something. He’s not in uniform: instead he wears a yellow Oxford, short-sleeved, with a red tie. He carries his brown suit coat over his

elbow.

“Louise Donnadieu?”

She nods.

The man smiles. He’s thin, unmuscled.

“Remember me?” he says.

Only then does Louise look closely at his face, which, she realizes, does ring a bell.

“Denny Hayes,” he says. “Used to live in Shattuck. I know your mom.”

“Oh,” she says. “Mr. Hayes.”

He holds up a hand, shaking his head. “Please,” he says. “Call me Denny.

You’re a grown woman now, right?”

The words shock her, though she supposes they’re technically true.

“How is she?” asks Denny Hayes.

“Who?”

“Your mother.”

Louise pauses. “All right, I guess. We don’t talk much.”

He nods once. As ready as she is to change the subject.

If she remembers correctly, Denny Hayes was one of several men who used to float around their house just after her father left town. She glances at his hand. Notices the wedding ring there. If he was married back then, she didn’t know it—but she wouldn’t have been surprised.

Nothing her mother did, or does, surprises her anymore. Not even when she got pregnant with Jesse when Louise was eleven. Not even when she confessed to being uncertain about who the father was.

God, thinks Louise—please don’t let this man be Jesse’s dad.

“How ’bout you?” Denny asks. “You married or anything? Got kids or

anything?”

“No,” says Louise. “Just working.”

“I’ve got two,” says Denny. “Boy and a girl. Third on the way. Moved away from Shattuck seven years ago, when I got promoted. I live in North

Elba, now. Close to work.”

Louise nods.

“Mind if I sit?” says Denny.

The dressing room is tiny and bright, the only two chairs in it side by side.

The two of them angle their knees awkwardly toward one another. Too close for Louise’s liking. In the mirror, she watches him fumble in his breast pocket for a notepad and pen.

“So,” says Denny. “You’re her counselor. The Van Laar girl?”

Louise nods.

“Any idea where she might have got to?”

“I don’t,” says Louise. Quietly.

Denny glances at her. “Lady out there,” he says, checking his notes, “T.J.?

Lady with the short hair?”

“The director,” says Louise.

“Right. She said you were the one first reported her missing. That true?”

Louise nods.

Denny regards her for a while. Deciding whether to say something.

“You didn’t notice?” he says. “Didn’t hear the door or nothing?”

Louise feels a tightness in her throat—though she cannot possibly be about to cry, she thinks. She can’t remember the last time she cried.

“Were you in the cabin overnight?” says Denny.

Louise opens her mouth to produce a response, but no sound emerges.

Denny puts the notepad down then. Lays the pen gently on top of it.

“Look,” says Denny. “I’m really not supposed to give out any kind of guidance here. But for an old friend, I will.”

He leans toward her, lowers his voice.

“You don’t wanna get yourself in trouble here,” he says. “Don’t wanna say anything you can’t take back. Because if you lie,” he says, “that’ll be a problem for you later.”

Louise looks up at him. He’s a foot from her face. His mustache looks damp.

“There’s a girl the next room over,” he says. “She works with you, I think.

I’m gonna talk to her next. If it turns out you two have different stories,” says Denny, “well, that looks bad. That raises questions.”

“I understand,” says Louise.

“You were a nice kid when I knew you,” says Denny. “I always liked you.

I heard some people gave you a hard time when you got older, said things about you and all. I never believed ’em.”

Louise waits. “Thank you,” she says at last. She hates him in this moment.

Hates his implication. Because most of what was said about Louise related to invented trysts with other students. And once, a teacher.

“That’s why I’m gonna give you some advice,” he says.

He stands up, tucks the pad and pen away.

“Ask for a lawyer,” he says. “And don’t say I’m the one who told you.”

Louise speaks without thinking.

“I have one already,” she says.

It feels good to say it, to watch his expression waver for a moment.

“Well, good,” he says. “Won’t have to find you a PD, then. Should the

need arise.”

She looks at him blankly.

“You know what a PD is, don’t you?”

Silence.

“A public defender,” says Denny. “A free lawyer. Sounds like you won’t need one of those.”

Only then does Louise realize what she’s done.

Alice

nice ranger has placed a towel around Alice’s shoulders; after a while,A he retrieves another one and places that around her, too. At one o’clock in the afternoon, she sits in an Adirondack chair in a patch of sunlight, shivering so badly that her teeth clack. She remembers this from Bear’s disappearance. It’s shock, someone told her then.

“Don’t worry, ma’am,” says the ranger, crouching down, placing a hand on her knee. “We’ll find her, okay? That’s what all our training helps with.”

Alice nods once. She wants him to stay with her.

Several other rangers with bloodhounds are pacing the camp, looking for scents. Earlier, she was asked to produce a pair of Barbara’s used underwear to help the dogs. She had looked at the ranger requesting it, horrified, until he apologized.

“It’s really the most useful garment for the hounds,” he said.

She couldn’t do it herself. Instead she asked them to find a counselor.

They could go through Barbara’s belongings on their own.

• • •

Now, Peter is in one of the camp buildings with some detective. He’s told her not to talk to anyone until Captain LaRochelle arrives from Albany. The same captain who oversaw Bear’s case.

Peter trusts him.

More to the point, he doesn’t trust anyone else.

Alice looks out at the lake. The truth is: she has no idea where Barbara could be. Everyone seems to be implying that she’s most likely run away, but Alice is worried that it might be something else.

• • •

Barbara has always been difficult.

As a toddler, she threw such terrible tantrums that Alice was concerned about what their Albany neighbors would think. At six, she showed no sign of stopping; no amount of yelling, or bribing, or spanking, or even slapping— Peter had tried this, a quick strike across the face when things got really out of hand—would quell them. Instead, Barbara would shriek ever louder, terrible screams that made it impossible to think.

Bear was never like that.

These episodes of Barbara’s were in the end the determining factor in their decision to send her away for school as early as they did. At seven years old, she was enrolled as a boarder at Emily Grange, where by all accounts she caused no problems—at first.

But lately they had been hearing something new.

In the middle of the last school year, there was a telephone call from the head of school, Susan Yoder. She was a formidable woman—a lesbian, thought Alice—who was said to be progressive. She was the first person Alice had ever met who requested the honorific Ms. She had invited Alice and Peter to campus to have a meeting with her in person: something they had never before been asked to do.

Peter was incensed. “For the amount we pay them,” he said, “one would think this person might understand what an imposition it is to ask a man to take time out of his workday.”

• • •

Ms. Yoder began her conversation with a note about “compassion”—a word she used frequently—a word Alice had never once heard used aloud in conversation, prior to that day.

And then she went on to describe what she referred to as Barbara’s “inappropriate” behavior on the school grounds.

“Most recently,” said Ms. Yoder, “she was—discovered—with a boy from town in her room.”

Next to her, Peter tightened his grip on the arm of the chair.

“In what state,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“What was the state of my daughter,” he said, “when she was found?”

“Oh,” said Ms. Yoder, reddening. “Clothed and all that.”

“But,” said Peter.

“But—well, the reality is we can’t be certain what they had been doing prior to Mrs. Burke’s entry into the room. Having an unmonitored boy in a girl’s bedroom is—certainly not ideal.”

She smiled slightly. Attempting to dispel some of the tension in the room.

Kids! Ms. Yoder seemed to be saying, with the shape of her mouth.

But Peter was still as a stone. Alice could tell some decision was forming in his mind.

“Mr. Van Laar, let me assure you that we aren’t too concerned. This behavior is quite normal for a girl of Barbara’s age,” said Ms. Yoder. “We

only want to be certain—”

Peter interrupted.

“And who is responsible for the oversight?”

Ms. Yoder frowned, confused. “Which—”

“Who is responsible for allowing the boy into the dormitory?”

“Well, Barbara is,” said Ms. Yoder.

For a moment, Alice was frightened. Peter was capable—not often, but capable—of outbursts. But Peter simply let Ms. Yoder’s words sit in the air.

“Who was the boy?” he said at last.

“I’m not sure of his name,” said Ms. Yoder. Her expression was changing, slightly. She was taking on a defiant aspect. Could she, too, have a temper?

Alice wondered. She was usually so preoccupied by Peter’s that it rarely occurred to her to worry about anyone else’s.

“How old was he?” asked Peter.

“I’m not sure,” said Ms. Yoder. “But Mrs. Burke in West House didn’t seem concerned, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Peter wasn’t finished. “Please describe him,” he said.

Ms. Yoder sighed. “I was not there to see him,” she said. “But Mrs. Burke in West House described him as thin and dark-haired.” She had only seen the back of him, Ms. Yoder continued, as he escaped through the window— Barbara’s room was on the first floor—and ran into the woods that bordered

the school.

“What was he wearing?” Peter had said.

“I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Mrs. Burke didn’t mention.”

“And Barbara?”

“She said he was a friend from town.”

Peter scoffed. A long silence ensued.

Alice focused on the objects in the room. A small marble statue of Lady Justice, blindfolded. On the bookshelves, a collection of books in neat rows, stripped of their jackets, organized by height. On the wall, a framed photo of a girls’ field hockey team from long ago. Ms. Yoder’s team when she was young, thought Alice.

She didn’t notice that Peter had risen from his chair. “Thank you, Miss Yoder,” he said. Emphasizing the first part of the name.

The woman furrowed her brow.

“I’m afraid there’s more to discuss,” she said. “In situations like these, we generally take some sort of disciplinary action.”

“Whatever you think best,” said Peter. “Come, Alice.”

She rose. But before they left the room, Ms. Yoder spoke again.

“Mrs. Van Laar,” she said, looking directly at her. Making a point. “May I answer any questions for you?”

If she did have questions, they would not come to her. And so she shook her head, and followed her husband silently from the room.

• • •

On the way to the car, Alice asked him if he might like to wait for Barbara, to talk to her directly. He shook his head.

“She’ll only lie,” said Peter. “I can’t abide it.”

In the car on the way back to Albany, he was silent while Alice, next to him, struggled to find something to say.

She had noticed recently that she was adopting the habits of Peter’s mother, who on most occasions sat off to one side, smiling pleasantly, largely letting her husband run the show. When Alice had first met her, she had wondered about her intelligence. But on the rare occasions the two of them were alone, Mrs. Van Laar had demonstrated a capacity for conversation that went beyond anything she displayed to her own husband. She was even witty, in her way.

“Early for the leaves to be changing,” said Alice, finally. And Peter affirmed that it was.

• • •

That night, he came to Alice to tell her that a decision had been made. The Emily Grange School couldn’t handle Barbara, he said. She’d have to go someplace else.

After consulting on the phone with a friend later that evening, Peter had emerged from his room with an announcement. Barbara would be enrolled next year at Élan, a school in Maine for children with discipline issues. He described it as a “behavior modification program.”

They’d have the summer together at the Preserve, he told her; and then she would go.

“Tell Barbara, would you?” he said, casually. Alice flinched.

“She’ll hate it,” said Alice.

“That,” said Peter, “is neither here nor there. What’s important is setting her on a right path. Preventing her from making some irreversible mistake.

Can you imagine,” he said—but he stopped himself.

Alice understood. A boy in Barbara’s room at Emily Grange meant the possibility of sex—if not now, soon. And sex meant the possibility of a pregnancy.

Prior to marrying into the Van Laars, Alice had never met a family so obsessed with its own reputation. Peter had explained it to her once, concisely, when they were younger, when Bear was four or five.

“Banking is an industry that relies on trust,” he said. “If we wish for customers to trust us to make decisions about their money, then they must trust our judgment in all things.” This, said Peter, was one of the reasons that Peter I had founded the Preserve and Camp Emerson; their interest in conservation was genuine, but also shrewd, designed to augment their reputation in the region. The friendships they’d curated with well-connected people over time were just the same: Shrewd. Chary. The Van Laars were meticulous about anyone they brought into their life, and ruthless about those they excised.

• • •

The thing was: Alice still hadn’t told Barbara about their plans in the fall. She was stopped, always, when she considered the commotion that would ensue: Barbara raging, making a scene. There was something so violent about Barbara, something inherently aggressive that Alice had noticed since her birth. Even beyond the tantrums she had had as a younger child, the teenage Barbara now seemed permanently stormy, always one misapprehension away from throwing a vicious punch.

When Barbara asked to spend the summer at Camp Emerson, therefore, it became in Alice’s mind another excuse to defer the announcement.

Her latest decision was to tell Barbara at the end of the summer. That would be best, thought Alice. One swift single blow, and then up to Élan.

Perhaps she could even tell her after she was in the car, packed for Emily Grange. After they were safely in the car, with a driver at the wheel.

She had planned it all out.

Barbara, she would say—speaking quietly. There’s been a change in plans.

• • •

Suddenly, Alice is roused from her thoughts by a sound someplace far in the distance.

It sounds like a young girl, crying out.

“Does anyone else hear that?” she says.

She turns to look over her shoulder, but the ranger assigned to attend to her is gone.

Judyta

hrough the kitchen window, Judy watches as the elder Mr. and Mrs. VanT Laar move across the lawn in the direction of the woods. He walks with a quick aggressive stride; she hustles along behind, trotting every few steps to keep up. These men never seem to really like their wives, Judy thinks. Not the ones at the club, and not the ones here. Her own father—as strict as he is with his children—not only defers to her mother but practically worships her.

Once, on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, he read to her a god-awful poem of his own creation, paper rattling in shaking hands, Judy and her siblings willing themselves not to laugh.

Judy gathers her strength once more before turning back in the direction of the large main room with the fireplace. Gathered around it, still, are young men and women who aren’t so much older than she is. She isn’t certain how they fit into this picture, but she understands it will be her job to find out. All of them, she thinks, look inappropriately casual, their demeanor almost offensively relaxed.

She hovers for a moment, looking down at her pad as if noticing something important on it.

“Officer,” someone says. In her tone is irony, derision.

Investigator, she thinks, before turning. A young woman, reclined on a sofa with her feet draped over its back, is looking in her direction. Her head is

resting in the lap of a young man. She looks familiar—an actress? A singer?

Judy feels as if she’s seen her on TV.

“What’s the working theory?” says the girl.

The young man she’s resting on puts a hand over his mouth, as if suppressing a laugh.

Judy ignores her. Looks down at her pad again.

“Who’s the prime suspect?” the girl tries, sitting up now.

“Shut up, Polly,” says another girl across the room, curly-haired, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.

Polly looks to the young man next to her. “What are you laughing at?”

“The way you said that,” he tells her. “It’s just so—earnest!” And he allows the laugh he’s been hiding to burst forth.

“I’m sorry,” he says, looking at Judy. “I know this is serious. I’m hungover.”

“I’m interested,” says Polly. “I want to know.”

Judy detests these people. And then remembers her training; feels guilty about her quick leap to hatred.

Unswervingly, surprising even herself, Judy walks straight through the main room, ignoring them all, and heads down a hallway on the other side.

She’ll gather her thoughts before interviewing any of them.

• • •

A part of her acknowledges that she is moving in this direction, away from the crowd she is supposed to interview, out of personal curiosity—she has always wondered about the homes of the members she serves at the golf club, and this one, she is certain, is even grander—and yet she assures herself that if she is caught by a colleague, she’s within her rights to tell him she’s simply looking for more people to interview.

Some of the doors along the hallway are open, and some are closed. She limits herself to the open ones. Into these, she pokes her head, knocking softly.

Most are untidy. Beds unmade, suitcases open, contents spilled out.

In one, she finds a man still asleep, snoring loudly, apparently unaware of, or uninterested in, the commotion on the grounds.

She goes on her way. The next door is closed but not latched.

She puts a finger to it and pushes. Inside, there is the vague smell of fresh paint. The walls are a light pink that makes Judy wrinkle her nose.

Someone’s suitcase is open on the floor in front of her.

Judy steps forward tentatively, her weight on her heels.

Inside are feminine things that someone has not taken care of: dresses and slips and high heels and a bikini, bright orange, still wet from a swim. Judy— herself very neat—suppresses the urge to hang it up someplace.

Inside the room, it becomes clear that the walls have been hastily painted.

A quick effort on the part of the hosts to make things look nice before the start of the party, Judy guesses. Her own mother might have done the same.

Her thoughts are interrupted by a rapid knocking on the front door. The

voices in the great room quiet.

Judy goes to investigate.

Louise

nnabel, as it turns out, does have a different story.A Alone in her dressing room—Denny Hayes has excused himself, has told her to wait there—Louise can no longer hear the anguished indiscernible outbursts that punctuated the first thirty minutes that went by. Instead, she hears Annabel’s laugh, on occasion. She’s calm now. Off the hook. Denny

Hayes is joking with her mom and dad.

The crybaby, thinks Louise. The canary.

There is no doubt in Louise’s mind that Annabel talked.

• • •

Finally, a knock.

Denny Hayes enters without waiting for a response. In his hands he is holding something Louise recognizes.

He says nothing. Sets the brown paper garbage bag on the vanity to the left of Louise. Then sits down opposite Louise, regarding her, silent.

Louise brushes some nail shards off her lap.

The smell of Annabel’s vomit, still inside the potato chip bag, reaches her, and she retches. Hides it.

Why on earth, she asks herself, did she assign Annabel the task of disposing of this evidence? Why did she not deal with it herself?

Denny clears his throat.

“Found your bag,” he says.

Louise half laughs. “Annabel’s bag.”

“Not what she says.”

It takes Louise a moment to process this. She expected Annabel to cave— to confess that both of them were absent overnight, that Annabel was out partying when she should have been watching the girls. That Annabel was drunk, high. That she was sick the next morning. This wouldn’t have surprised Louise. Annabels always cave.

What she didn’t expect was an outright lie.

“Annabel told us about your night,” says Denny.

“My night?” says Louise. “Did Annabel tell you about her night?”

Denny stands and steps toward the vanity, opens the bag. Again, Louise gags. Denny, on the other hand, betrays nothing. If the smell affects him, he doesn’t show it.

From the bag he extracts the beer bottle, the end of a joint, and a smaller bag: this one contains white powder. A substantial amount of it.

“What the hell is that?” says Louise. Though she knows; of course she knows what it is. She’s been dating John Paul for four years. The substance has been a point of contention between them for nearly that long.

“Did you get this here,” says Denny, “or back in Shattuck?”

“That’s not mine,” says Louise. “If that was in there, Annabel added it.”

Annabel, Louise is beginning to understand, is not the innocent kid she pegged her for.

“I’ve never done coke in my life,” says Louise.

Denny pauses. “But you know what it looks like?”

Louise says nothing.

“The lawyer you mentioned,” he says. “Can you reach him?”

• • •

Louise, accompanied by Denny Hayes, walks slowly up the hill toward the main house. Her feeling of breathlessness is unfamiliar: years of long runs up

steep inclines have caused her resting heart rate to be low, her demeanor to be generally calm. But now she breathes quickly, nostrils flaring, armpits damp.

John Paul, she reminds herself, owes her this.

Four years of togetherness. Four whole years of her life. Their relationship has meaning, she tells herself. She is right to do this. It is not unusual to ask one’s fiancé for help in an emergency.

This is what Louise intends to do: at the top of the hill, she will knock on the great double doors of Self-Reliance and ask to speak to John Paul

McLellan.

John Paul, whose father is a lawyer.

When Denny asked where they’re heading, she left out specifics. All she said, instead, was that she had a family friend up at the main house.

“You do?” said Denny. Skeptical.

In front of the house now, a small group of young women Louise’s age are gathered, talking in low tones. They eye her. Her counselor uniform.

It’s Denny who lifts the iron door knocker, forged in the shape of a blackfly. He batters the door three times with it.

Louise stands behind him, heart racing, rehearsing the words she will say first.

After a moment, a young woman opens the door, clad in a kind of silk nightgown. She’s shockingly beautiful, and Louise blinks, trying to decide if she’s famous.

Denny, too, looks dumbfounded. For a moment he stands there, mouth

open.

“Need something?” the young woman asks.

Denny steps back theatrically, makes a sweeping gesture with one hand, indicating to Louise that this is her show, not his.

“Is John Paul here?” says Louise. “John Paul McLellan?”

The young woman takes her in. Louise shifts a bit. Tugs at the uniform shorts that ride up on her legs.

“Father or son?” the young woman asks. In her voice, Louise can hear an

accent. Italian, perhaps.

“Son,” says Louise.

The young woman nods, and disappears down a hallway. Louise closes her eyes, imagines what this person will say—“There’s a counselor for you, John Paul”—some sort of smirk on her beautiful face—and experiences one moment of reflexive jealousy. Despite everything.

Denny Hayes, she notices, has moved a respectful distance away.

She can’t remember much about him from the year or years he was dating her mother, but if she thinks about it, she does remember a certain kindness in him. Or at least a lack of cruelty.

She wonders if he, like her, feels small in this moment, standing before the grand facade of a house in which they are not welcome.

She can hear footsteps now: the young woman returning with John Paul.

She wonders how much he’ll remember about last night. On other occasions, following a fight, he has been remorseful, conciliatory, swearing off drinking for a time before returning to it with fervor the moment he reunites with friends from school.

She hopes that this morning is no different. She hopes he’ll feel guilty about last night, rather than enraged.

But when the footsteps down the hallway crescendo and then stop, she sees it is not John Paul Jr. who has returned.

It’s John Paul’s father instead.

Mr. McLellan looks worried, pale, much different from how he was the last time she saw him, over a year ago now: then he had been tipsy, pink- faced, swilling strong drinks at a restaurant John Paul had chosen. It had been clear to Louise, upon their arrival, that the McLellans had not been expecting her. She had believed that the purpose of the dinner was to announce the news of their engagement, but it had not come up at all, and they had fought about it on the way home. The father had been all right on that occasion— nicer than the wife and sister, at least. She recalls that the McLellans had talked the whole time about politics—something Louise knows something about, actually. Something she even has strong opinions about. But no one had asked.

Today, standing before her, Mr. McLellan shows no recognition on his face. His expression is entirely blank.

“Mr. McLellan,” Louise begins. And fumbles for words.

“Go on,” says John Paul’s father, distractedly. “May I help you?”

“I’m not sure if you remember me,” says Louise. “I’m—I know John Paul.”

Mr. McLellan looks at her, head tilted slightly. Trying and failing to place her. And then, after a moment, his expression changes.

“Oh, Christ,” says Mr. McLellan. Lowly enough so that only she can hear him. “Are you the reason he’s gone?”

Louise blinks. “Gone?” she says. But Mr. McLellan ignores her.

“Were you with him?” he asks.

At this she hesitates—not out of fear so much as uncertainty.

“Sort of. Briefly.”

Mr. McLellan looks impatient.

“Here’s what I know,” he says. “He looked like hell when he came through the door in the middle of the night. The rest of us were sitting up talking in the great room when he came in: face beaten within an inch of his life. He was bleeding from his lip. He said something about a girl—that’s you, I presume—and stumbled down the hallway. Drunk as hell.”

Mr. McLellan shakes his head, disgusted. “In front of all our friends, this happened. Then this morning, he was gone. No sign of him or his car.”

Mr. McLellan looks at her as if waiting for an apology. When none is issued, he continues.

“Is there anything I should know about last night? If there is, you need to tell me. Quickly.”

“No,” says Louise. “I mean, not really. We had an argument. He—”

She pauses, choosing her words. Threatened me, she wants to say. “He was angry with me. My friend had to—step in. That’s how John Paul got hurt.”

“Your friend,” says Mr. McLellan. Regarding her.

“I don’t know where John Paul went,” says Louise. “I came here to find him. To talk to him. I had no idea he was gone.”

Mr. McLellan nods slowly. His eyes, Louise notices, are much like John Paul’s: a very light green, beautiful in sunlight. But Mr. McLellan’s, that

morning, are shot through with red veins that seem to be increasing in number as their conversation goes on.

“Do you know what this looks like,” he says to Louise. His voice is low and vicious. “That he’s gone now. Do you understand what this looks like, with Barbara gone too?”

She does. For Louise has been thinking it also.

Denny is clearing his throat loudly now, ready to go.

Mr. McLellan moves as if to turn back inside, but stops.

“Are they taking you in for something?” he says.

“Yes,” says Louise.

“What is it?”

“Drugs,” says Louise. “But they weren’t mine.”

For an instant, the fleeting hope that Mr. McLellan might offer her some counsel crosses her mind.

But Mr. McLellan only takes a step backward, into the shadows of the house, as if being pulled inside by an invisible force.

“Best of luck,” he says, and turns, and lets the door swing closed behind him.

Tracy

he stranger doesn’t speak. The stranger stands thirty feet away. WithoutT Tracy’s glasses, everything beyond twenty is a blur.

“Hello?” Tracy says.

But the figure before her says nothing. Instead, it holds a finger up to its lips, and then gestures once—a beckoning wave—and then begins to walk silently in the direction from which it apparently came.

Its silver hair glints in the scant light that filters through the trees above.

The way it moves is ghostlike, and for a moment Tracy is reminded of Scary Mary—one of the legendary ghosts on the Preserve—who is always described in this way. A gray-haired lady, standing still in the woods.

Campers report seeing her only from a distance; then she moves on.

The problem with this theory is that this stranger walks, in Tracy’s mind, more like a man than a woman.

The stranger turns and waits. For a moment, Tracy considers staying in place. But her hunger and thirst make the decision for her. She moves instead in the stranger’s direction.

• • •

They walk for perhaps twenty minutes, Tracy trailing behind. Whether the figure ahead of her is leading her to safety or danger, she doesn’t know.

And then she sees a clearing through the trees, and suddenly she is oriented again.

The stranger points silently in the direction of Self-Reliance, and then recedes into the wild again.

• • •

There, ahead of Tracy: a swarm of activity on the lawn. All of the police cruisers that crossed her path as she was setting out that morning are parked now at odd angles on the lawn, along with four pickup trucks, an ambulance.

Tracy wonders if there’s any chance that—in the hubbub surrounding Barbara’s disappearance—her own absence has gone unnoticed. With this in mind, she turns south and begins to walk in the direction of Camp Emerson.

She keeps her head down, picks up her pace.

She’s almost at the ridge that drops down toward camp when she hears a woman shouting: “There she is!”

There’s something familiar about the voice.

“Barbara?” someone calls.

“No,” the woman shouts. “Tracy! Tracy’s back.”

And suddenly, her back still turned to Self-Reliance, Tracy realizes why the voice sounds familiar: it belongs to Donna Romano.

Judyta

or five minutes, Judy has been standing in one corner of the main room,F watching as a middle-aged man speaks quietly in the threshold of the front door to a young woman on the other side. The young woman is beautiful and small, with long dark hair parted in the middle. She wears a Camp Emerson polo and looks up at the tall man before her with an expression that hovers on desperation. Judy can’t hear what they’re saying.

The girl retreats, the man retreats, the front door closes. A moment later, Denny Hayes enters. Catches her eye, beckons her toward him.

“Listen, honey,” says Hayes, when she reaches him. “I got Barbara Van Laar’s counselor with me. I’m gonna transport her to the Wells station. See if I can get any more out of her. I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

She frowns. This seems odd.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “You won’t be alone for long. We’ve got a dozen more BCI guys heading this way. Captain’s even coming up from Albany.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Family’s connected. You know.”

She nods.

“Who was that man?” she asks. “The one in the doorway?”

Denny looks down at his pad, searching for the name. “John Paul McLellan Sr.,” he says. “The Van Laars’ lawyer. That girl back there said he was a family friend.”

Denny and Judy look at each other for a moment, each registering the

improbability of this statement.

“What did the parents say?”

“The parents?” says Hayes. Caught off guard.

“The Van Laars,” says Judy. The last thing he told her when they parted ways this morning was that he’d handle the interviews with the parents, at the Great Hall down the hill.

“Oh,” he says—looking flustered. “They went back to the house. Wanted to wait for Captain LaRochelle. I guess they know him.”

He recovers himself, then continues. “If you get hungry, EnCon brought sandwiches. They’re on the lawn.”

She’s not hungry. But she does have to pee. After several cups of coffee at the station that morning, she’s had to for most of the time they’ve been here.

She’s not certain what procedure is. Nowhere in her training did she come across this exact scenario: What do you do if you’re in someone’s private home for hours and hours with no access to the outside world? Rich people especially. She doesn’t want to ask these people for anything. If she were a man, she’d piss in the woods.

She’s heading in that direction when she hears a voice.

“Excuse me?”

She turns. It’s a young woman in a silk nightgown. Judy had noticed her earlier, when she first walked in.

“Do you have a moment?” she says, and in her voice Judy notices an

accent.

Judy nods. Takes her notebook out.

“I want to tell you something,” says the woman. She glances over her

shoulder.

“Go ahead,” she says.

“Very early this morning,” says the woman, “a man came back through the house after being out most of the night. And he looked like he’d been fighting. His face looked—terrible. He was bleeding.”

Judy writes down phrases.

“Now he’s gone,” says the young woman. “When the counselor and the other policeman came looking for him, I was the one who opened the door.

They asked me to get him, but I couldn’t find him. I went all over the house.”

She raises her eyebrows, puts her hands forward, palms up, in a gesture that Judy interprets as—Do you see what I mean?

“Do you know his name?”

“John Paul McLellan,” says the woman. “There are two of them. I mean the younger one. The son. I found his father and sister instead,” says the woman. “They told me he’d left early. His father went to talk to the counselor instead.”

Judy nods. This lines up with what Denny told her.

“Do you know how the counselor knew them? The McLellans?”

“No.”

“Any idea how the son’s face got like that?”

“No. No one’s talking about it. I think that’s strange. Don’t you?” The woman leans in closer. “His father is said to be a close friend of the family. I think he works for the bank.”

Judy looks at her, trying to determine how trustworthy she seems.

“Did Barbara’s parents see his face like that? Mr. and Mrs. Van Laar?”

“No,” says the woman. “They were asleep already.”

She hesitates for a second, and then says: “I believe that you’d have this

information by now if they did.”

Judy writes this down.

“Well, thank you,” she says. “Is there anything else to add?”

“He seemed drunk. When he came through the house, he smelled like liquor. But all these people drink too much,” says the woman, waving a hand in the air, indicating every guest in the house.

“Also,” she says, “he drives a blue Trans Am.”

Judy looks up, startled by the specificity of the observation. She had not pegged this woman for someone who would notice cars.

“Why do you know that?” she asks.

The woman looks at her levelly. “I’ve been inside it,” she says.

Judy flushes. Then looks down, scribbling.

“And your name is?” she says.

“I’d prefer not to give it,” says the woman. “If that’s all right.” She looks down. Looks up again at Judy.

“I don’t know these people well,” she says. “A friend of mine told me to come. Some girl I met in New York City while I was auditioning for a play. I thought it sounded fun. The land here is beautiful, but the people are— terrible. I can’t wait to go back to Los Angeles.”

Judy nods.

“Or Rome,” says the woman. “Maybe I should just go back to Rome. I had steady work there. Here, not so much.”

And then, as if catching herself, she smiles at Judy, and Judy—against her

will—blushes.

“What’s your name, darling?”

“Judyta,” says Judy. Not Investigator Luptack. Not Judy. Not Joo-DEE- tah, as most Americans say when forced to pronounce her given name.

Instead she pronounces it just as her mother does—Yoo-DIT-ah—and the Italian woman sighs, as if hearing a poem, and tells her it’s beautiful.

Louise

here’s a state police satellite station in Wells, New York, and this isT where Louise is driven by Denny Hayes, who on the way regales her with the story of his life, describes the two children he’s had with a woman he loves. He tells her their hobbies, describes the minor trouble they’ve caused as of late—nothing serious.

He waits, perhaps expecting a response. An acknowledgment, at least.

Louise gives none, and at last he goes quiet.

• • •

The Wells station is tiny and austere, a concrete building whose only ornament is a pay phone on the wall.

There’s one trooper sitting at one desk. Otherwise, the building seems completely unoccupied.

“Got a nickel?” Denny asks her. When she shakes her head, he fumbles in his own pocket and produces one for her, then gestures to the phone.

“Go ahead,” he says, and then he retreats to a different corner, respectfully lowers his head, pretending that doing so will prevent him from overhearing everything she says.

She puts a finger to the dial. Hesitates. She does not want to call her mother, but she has no one else to call.

At last, reluctantly, she dials the number to her childhood home, closing her eyes against the memories that the act invokes: being forgotten one too many times at a friend’s house; calling home from the nurse’s office, sweaty with fever, knowing that no one would answer the phone. Now, like then, it rings many times in a row; but then there comes a little voice on the other end

that catches Louise off guard.

“Hello?”

“Jesse?” says Louise. “Jesse?”

He doesn’t ever answer the phone. He’s timid to the point of incapacity: a trait bemoaned by their mother at every opportunity.

“Jesse, are you all right?”

“Louise,” says Jesse. “Mom’s sick.”

“What kind of sick?” Louise asks.

“She’s in bed.”

“Is she awake?” Louise says. “Is she breathing? Jesse?”

Across the room, Denny Hayes raises his head.

“She’s okay,” says Jesse. “Just hasn’t left her room for a while.”

Louise closes her eyes.

“Have you eaten today?” she asks him, quietly. She wishes for privacy.

Angles her back toward Denny.

On the other end of the line, she hears a quick shuddering intake of breath: this is Jesse trying not to cry. She pictures him, the corners of his mouth tucked down.

“Listen,” Louise says. “Listen. Go to Shattuck’s. Get a few things and put it on my account. Not Mom’s,” she says. “Mine.”

“Aw, Lou,” says Jesse, and she can almost hear his face reddening at the thought. To interact with any adult outside the family is almost unthinkable to Jesse.

“Do it,” says Louise. “Jesse, I need you to try to do it. You can’t go hungry.”

Jesse hesitates. Behind her, Louise can hear Denny clearing his throat.

“What should I get?” Jesse says at last.

Suddenly, a different voice: the operator, requesting more change. Louise has none.

“Cheap stuff that’ll fill you up,” says Louise, with urgency. “Bread and cheese. The kind of cheese that comes in a jar. Get whatever cooked meat you can find on sale. Whatever they’ve got.”

“Okay,” says Jesse, tearfully. “I’ll try.”

A moment passes in silence. And then he speaks again: “Louise? Why did you call?”

But there is a click on the line—time’s up—and the operator ends their conversation abruptly.

• • •

She stands there with the phone in her hand for some time, gathering the strength to turn back toward Denny—who has clearly heard everything. Who remembers her mother, who no doubt witnessed her mother at her worst. He might pity her, thinks Louise. If there is anything Louise despises, it’s the feeling of being pitied—especially by someone like Denny Hayes, who is himself pitiable in ways too numerous to count.

And sure enough, when she hangs up the phone and steels herself to face him, he is looking at her with a somber expression on his face, his lips a straight line of compassion, feigned or real. Louise stares back at him

defiantly.

“What?” she says.

“You all right?” he says. He’s holding something in his hands. It’s a paper cup of coffee. He holds it out to her. She doesn’t take it.

“Sure,” says Louise. “Except I’m under arrest for something I didn’t do.

That’s the only thing wrong with me.”

Denny’s expression hardens.

“Come on,” he says, and walks her into one of two back rooms, and places her at a table there, and puts the coffee down roughly. A little splashes out, scalds her hand. He tells her that a different investigator will be by to speak with her shortly. He has to return to the Preserve.

Then he closes and locks the door between them.

Alice

lice sits up very straight, listening for that sound again. It was a girl’sA voice, crying out. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tone of the voice made it clear that the girl was distressed.

It wasn’t Barbara. She’d recognize both of her children’s voices anywhere.

She makes no move. Closes her eyes, which sometimes helps her hear things better. She sits in her Adirondack chair, listening for the voice again.

“Alice.”

She’s been expecting the young ranger who’s been assigned to watch over her. But it isn’t the ranger who stands before her. It’s her husband, regarding

her with something like disgust.

“Why do you look like that?”

“I heard a girl crying out,” says Alice. “I was listening.”

Peter looks at her, skeptical. “Barbara?”

“No. Not Barbara.”

“They did find another girl,” Peter concedes. “Barbara’s cabinmate.

Apparently, she went looking for Barbara.”

Alice nods. Satisfied.

“Has anyone asked to interview you since the last time we spoke?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Unsteadily, Alice stands up from the chair. The depth of its seat makes her rock several times before she rises. Peter makes no move to help her.