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  She takes a deep breath, inhaling the green scent of freshly mown grass. The lawn service guys must have been here today while she and Sadie were in the city. The flowerbeds have been freshly weeded and the boxwood hedge has been shorn into a precision horizontal border.

  The yard looks a lot tidier than it did in summers past, when she handled the gardening and Nick mowed. But when they moved up here from the city, they never wanted that manicured landscape style. They never wanted to become one of those suburban Westchester families that relied on others to maintain the yard, the house, and the pets, even the kids.

  Yeah, and look at us now.

  First came the weekly cleaning service Lauren’s friends insisted on hiring for her right after she had Sadie. By the time the two-month gift certificate expired, colic was in full swing, and Lauren was relieved to let someone else continue to clean the toilets and do the laundry.

  She kept the cleaning service.

  By the time Sadie was toddling, her older siblings’ traveling sports teams kept the whole family on the go. Chauncey was left behind so often that Lauren was forced to hire a dog-walking service. Sure, she occasionally misses those early morning or dusk strolls with Chauncey—but not enough to go back to doing it daily.

  She kept the dog walkers, too.

  Nick hired the lawn service last March, just in time for the spring thaw, as he put it—ironic, because it was also just in time for the killing frost that ended their marriage.

  Yes, she had seen it coming. For a few months before it happened, anyway. That didn’t make it any easier for her to bear.

  And the kids—Lauren hates Nick for their pain; hates herself, perhaps, even more. She was the one who’d gone to great lengths to maintain the happy family myth, such great lengths that the separation blindsided all three of them.

  Nick had wanted to tell Ryan and Lucy last fall that they were seeing a marriage counselor. But Lauren was afraid they’d start piecing things together, suspecting the affair. Or that they’d ask pointed questions that would demand the ugly truth or whitewashed lies.

  Nick was probably right—though she wouldn’t admit that to him. They should have given the kids a heads-up when things first started to unravel.

  He was right, too, that sending Ryan and Lucy away to camp for eight weeks was the healthiest thing for everyone.

  When he suggested it back around Easter, Lauren—who for years had frowned upon parents who shipped their kids hundreds of miles to spend summers in the woods among strangers—had taken a good, hard look at what their own household had become. She was forced to recognize that her older children would be better off elsewhere while she picked up the pieces.

  Still, she didn’t give in to Nick about camp without a fight. God forbid she make anything easy on him in the blur of angry, bitter days after he left. She wanted only to make him suffer.

  In the end, though, Ryan and Lucy went to camp.

  They were homesick at first—so homesick Lauren was tempted, whenever she opened the mailbox to another woe-is-me letter, to drive up there and bring them both home. Now that it’s almost August, though, it’s clear from their letters that Ryan and Lucy are having a blast in the Adirondacks.

  Lauren has only Sadie to worry about for the time being, while she figures out how to move on after two decades of marriage.

  She has yet to come up with a long-term plan. It’s hard enough to keep her voice from breaking as she reads bedtime stories in an empty house, to fix edible meals for two—and to keep tabs on Sadie’s toys.

  Find Fred.

  She walks down the back porch steps, past fat bumblebees lazing in the flowers, and crosses over to the Volvo parked on the driveway.

  Please let Fred be in the backseat…

  Please let Fred be in the backseat…

  Fred is not in the backseat.

  A lot of other crap is: crumpled straw wrappers, a dog-eared coloring book and two melted crayons, a nearly empty tube of Coppertone KIDS, a couple of fossilized Happy Meal fries, and one of Sadie’s long-missing mittens whose partner Lauren finally threw away in May.

  Lauren carries it all back into the house and dumps it into the kitchen garbage before returning, empty-handed, to the living room.

  Sadie, tearstained and sucking her thumb, looks up expectantly.

  “Sweetie, you must have dropped him, somewhere in the city. I couldn’t find—”

  Cut off by a deafening wail, Lauren helplessly sinks onto the couch. “Oh, Sadie, come here.” She gathers her daughter into her arms, stroking her downy hair—not as blond this summer as it has been in years past.

  Is it because she’s growing up?

  Or because she’s been stuck hibernating with a shell-shocked mother who’s barely been able to drag herself out of bed and face the light of day…

  Riddled with guilt, Lauren says, “I’m sorry, baby.” About so much more than the lost toy.

  “I want Fred! I love him! Please,” Sadie begs. “I need him back.”

  I know how you feel.

  In silence, Lauren swallows the ache in her own throat and fishes a crumpled tissue from the back pocket of khaki shorts that last August felt a size too small. Now they’re a few sizes too big, cinched at the waist with her fourteen-year-old’s belt.

  The Devastation Diet. Maybe she should write a book.

  Lauren wipes her daughter’s tears, then, surreptitiously, her own. “Come on, calm down. It’s going to be okay.”

  “I want Fred!”

  Lauren sighs. “So do I.”

  I want a lot of other things, too.

  Looks like we’re both going to have to suck it up, baby girl.

  “Please, Mommy, please…where is he? Where? Where?”

  “Shh, let me think.”

  Mentally retracing their steps, Lauren is sure the stuffed animal was with them in the cab from her sister Alyssa’s apartment to Grand Central, because it almost fell out of Sadie’s bag when they climbed out on Lexington. She remembers carrying both Sadie and the bag across the crowded sidewalk, through the wooden doors, along the Graybar passageway. She set Sadie down and gave the bag back to her when they stopped to buy a New York Post and some gum at Hudson News.

  “You must have dropped Fred at the station or on the train. Next time we go to the city we can check lost and found,” Lauren promises.

  That’s not going to cut it: Sadie opens her mouth and wails.

  Now what?

  Lauren closes her eyes and lifts her face toward the ceiling.

  Where the hell is Fred?

  Never mind that, where the hell is Nick?

  Why does he get to start a new life and leave Lauren here alone to handle the fallout from the old? Lost toys, lost souls…none of it seems to be his problem anymore. No, he’s moved on to a two-bedroom condo down in White Plains—furnished with “really cool stuff,” according to Lucy. Complete with a “gi-mongous, kick-butt flat-screen,” according to Ryan. On a high floor, “close to God and the moon,” according to Sadie.

  “Good for Daddy,” Lauren says whenever the kids tell her stuff like that. She tries hard to keep sarcasm from lacing her words because you’re not supposed to speak negatively about your ex to the children. That’s got to be right up there with letting them have their way, saying Why bother? and I told you so, and giving them apples for dinner.

  Then again, as far as Lauren’s concerned, any bad parenting on her part is vastly outdone by the ultimate worst parenting on Nick’s. Walking out on three kids pretty much takes the prize, right?

  Sadie sobs on.

  Lauren’s eyes snap open.

  “You know what? Daddy will get Fred for you.”

  That’s right. Let Daddy deal with something for a change.

  Poor Sadie cries harder—probably because she’s already figured out that Daddy is hardly the most reliable guy in the world.

  But it’s time for him to step up.

  Lauren grabs her cell phone.

  Nick’s is still t
he first number on her speed dial—only because she has no idea how to change it. Ryan had to program the phone for her when she got it, and it seems wrong to ask a twelve-year-old boy to bump his father’s number to the bottom of the list—or, for that matter, delete it altogether.

  At least from the speed dial. Several times, carrying her phone in her back pocket, she’s apparently accidentally bumped the keypad, calling him without realizing the line was open.

  “Pocket dialing,” Lucy and Ryan call the phenomenon. They think it’s hilarious that Nick, in the middle of a client luncheon, once got to hear tone-deaf Lauren driving along and singing at the top of her lungs the way she does when she’s alone in the car—or thinks she is. Nick was amused by it, too, back when they were married.

  Now that he’s gone, though, pocket dialing is no laughing matter. She really doesn’t want him privy to what she says or does when she assumes she’s out of his earshot.

  Today, Lauren dials his number the traditional way, and the line rings repeatedly. Just when she thinks the call is going into voice mail, Nick picks up.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  He’s answered her calls that way for as long as he’s had caller ID: Hey, what’s up?

  She used to think it was sweetly intimate. Now it seems cold and impersonal. Go figure. Maybe that’s because he used to pick up on the first ring. Now it’s the fifth, undoubtedly giving him time to roll his eyes and inform whoever happens to be in the vicinity of his window office in the Chrysler building that it’s the ex, calling with some unreasonable request.

  This time, he would be absolutely correct about that.

  She holds the phone away from her for a moment, toward Sadie, still sobbing beside her. “Do you hear that, Nick?”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s our daughter.”

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “She’s crying because she’s lost Fred.”

  Lauren waits for Nick to ask who Fred is.

  When he does, she hates herself for asking, in return, “How can you not know?”

  Of course he doesn’t know. He doesn’t live here. Then again, even when he did, he never paid much attention to the kids’ little quirks.

  To be fair, a lot of men don’t. Even her perfect brother-in-law, Ben, is an occasionally imperfect dad, according to her sister.

  But Lauren isn’t in the mood to be fair right now. Not with an inconsolable child on her hands and yet another lonely night stretching endlessly ahead.

  “Fred is Sadie’s favorite stuffed animal,” she succinctly informs Nick as she carries the phone to the kitchen. “She takes Fred everywhere.”

  “Oh. Well, did you check the compartment in her room?” He’s referring to a small nook concealed by a secret panel in Sadie’s closet. A while back, Lauren had followed her nose and discovered her youngest was stashing uneaten meat and vegetables there, tired of being nagged about her fussy eating habits.

  “She lost Fred in the city, not at home.” Lauren picks up the paring knife again.

  “What were you doing in the city?”

  “Having lunch with my sister. Nick…” She pauses, and then swallows the next two words she was about to say.

  Can you—

  No, that’s too wishy-washy. If she phrases it as a question, he’s free to say no.

  “I need you,” she says instead, “to stop by the lost and found at Grand Central and pick up Fred, then bring him over here when you get home tonight.”

  “How do you know it’s at Grand Central?”

  Leave it to Nick to depersonalize Fred.

  “I don’t, for sure. But we were in the city when she lost him.” Emphasis on the him.

  “You were in the city today and you didn’t bring Sadie to see me?”

  “We were busy. I’m sure you were, too.”

  “Not too busy to take five minutes out for my daughter. My office is right across the street from Grand Central. You could have told me you were going to be there.”

  She could have. But then she’d have had to see him. And today was supposed to be an escape, not a miserable reminder of her estranged husband.

  “I know where your office is,” she says curtly. “Listen, you need to go check the lost and found, and if Fred’s not there, then… I don’t know, look around the station.”

  “Look around?” he echoes incredulously. “How would I ever be able to—”

  “You need to do this, Nick, because, believe me, Sadie will never be able to function without Fred.”

  There’s a pause on the other end of the line.

  Lauren begins slicing the white flesh of the apple with rhythmic little jabs of the knife.

  “Sadie won’t be able to function?” Nick finally echoes in her ear. “Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?”

  “Hell, yes, it’s dramatic. She’s four, Nick. Think about it. First you left, then Ryan and Lucy did, and now Fred’s gone…”

  And that means I’m all she’s got…and I’m overwhelmed, so step up, dammit!

  “I’ve got a client meeting. I doubt lost and found will even be open by the time it’s over.”

  “Then go check before the meeting.”

  “I’m in the middle of a workday.”

  “You’re not too busy to take five minutes out for your daughter. And anyway, you’re right across the street from Grand Central,” she reminds him pointedly.

  He sighs. “Okay. I’ll go check when I have a chance. What am I looking for, exactly?”

  “A pink stuffed rabbit.”

  “Got it. A pink stuffed rabbit that answers to Fred.” He snickers.

  There was a time when Lauren might have cracked a smile. But now her face feels as brittle as the rest of her. “Call me when you find him.”

  “You mean if I find him.”

  Him. Good. Small triumph.

  “If he’s not in the lost and found, then check the floor on the entrance off Lex, and check Hudson News.”

  “Which Hudson News?”

  “The one just off the main concourse.”

  “There are about a hundred Hudson News stands off the main concourse.”

  “A hundred? Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?”

  Touché, Nick.

  He sighs. “I suppose you want me to check them all.”

  “Only if Fred’s not in the lost and found,” Lauren tells him, and hangs up.

  It’s been over fourteen years since Jeremy vanished, yet every moment of the horrific aftermath remains fresh in Elsa Cavalon’s mind.

  She relives the nightmare daily: realizing her son was missing, searching the house, calling Brett at work, calling 911, calling Jeremy’s name through the streets of the neighborhood until she was hoarse.

  “It doesn’t go away.”

  Elsa didn’t make the statement, but she might as well have.

  “No,” she agrees with Joan, her latest therapist, seated in a chair opposite her. “It doesn’t go away.”

  She isn’t sure what they were talking about, exactly—her mind tends to wander during her sessions. No. Not just then. Her mind wanders always, no matter where she is, to the past, and Jeremy.

  It doesn’t go away…

  The pain? The regret? The guilt?

  No matter. None of it goes away.

  “You constantly go over every detail in your mind, looking for clues,” she tells Joan. “Even after all these years, you think there might be something you missed.”

  Joan nods.

  “You wonder what really happened that day. You wonder what’s going to happen today—whether a police officer is going to show up at your door and tell you they found him. But not him. His—”

  Her voice breaks. She can’t say it.

  His remains.

  Chin in hand, Joan sits silently waiting, the way therapists so often do, for Elsa to regain her composure.

  Intimately familiar with the process, she’s been through more than her share of shrinks sin
ce her son disappeared.

  The first, when they were still in Boston, was Dr. Hyland. She was the one who told Elsa that she had only two options.

  “You can either curl up and die, Elsa, or you can go on living.”

  Elsa didn’t care much for Dr. Hyland.

  There were others. They move a lot because of Brett’s job as a nautical engineer, and he insists that wherever they land, she get herself right into therapy.

  In Virginia Beach, she saw grandfatherly Dr. Saunders; in San Diego, a tattooed woman named Hedy; in Tampa, the effete John Robert—pronounced Jean Robacute;ere, though he wasn’t French.

  Here in coastal Connecticut, it’s serious, bespectacled Joan.

  None of the trained professionals can give Elsa the answers, or the forgiveness, she so desperately needs. None of them can convince her that what happened to her son wasn’t her own fault, on some level.

  They merely help to keep her going, reminding her of the possibility, however slight, that Jeremy himself—or the truth about what happened to him—might someday surface. That wisp of hope keeps her alive.

  Hope, and the medication she’s been on since her suicide attempt years ago, not long after she lost Jeremy. Antidepressants, they’re called. As if swallowing a pill could magically erase one’s bleak state of mind and make the world right again.

  It can’t. But swallowing enough pills could make it all go away—or so she decided one morning just before they moved to Virginia Beach. She had made the choice between Dr. Hyland’s options at last. She had chosen to curl up and die.

  Brett found her, though—just in time.

  In the hospital, he stayed by her bedside for days on end, as though he was afraid she was going to try it again.

  She didn’t. She saw the ravaged look in his eyes. She couldn’t do that to him. He couldn’t bear to lose her, too.

  So she was released from the hospital, and she started taking medication.

  Back then, it was all Elsa could manage just to get out of bed in the mornings, numbly moving through her waking hours doing what is necessary to stay alive: namely, eating and breathing. Not much more than that, most days.

  In her early twenties, Elsa had been a runway model, and she’d kept her looks over the years.