A thin sliver of light seeps in through the gap in the door. As my eyes adjust, I don’t see any movement. I don’t hear any breathing. I think I’m alone. I close the door.

I pull a sheet off what I know is the Rembrandt, and then I strip off my wet clothes down to my underwear and curl up in the sheet. Exhaustion is settling into my bones. I can’t string thoughts together to even form coherent questions anymore. I hope I’ll be safe here. I don’t know if I’m safe anywhere.

But I do sleep.

And then I wake.

I’m alone in the barn, and sunlight is seeping through the gaps in the boards. I toss off the sheet and put my still-damp clothes back on. My mouth feels gummy, and I miss my toothpaste. I think of Claire and I miss her.

I wonder where Peter is. He should have returned from the void by now. He should have checked the house and seen the intruders. He should have, unless something happened to him. Feral dogs, the townspeople, the void, the Missing Man...

I don’t want to think anymore. Leaving the sheets on the ground, I inch open the door to the barn and climb into the nearest house through a kitchen window. I use the bathroom, though the toilet doesn’t flush. There isn’t any toothpaste, but I find a stray mint tucked into a crevasse between couch cushions. I eat it. I then investigate the junk pile in the backyard for breakfast. I find a bicycle tire, half a cookie, a juice box, and an uncooked steak. Sadly, I leave the steak—I can’t do anything with it right now. I also find a collection of tiny teddy bears with keychain hooks on the tops of their heads. Claire would have liked them. I take them and the food with me back to the barn.

In the barn, I arrange the tiny bears in a circle. Alone in the center of the vast barn, they look sad and lonely. I dart outside again to fetch the bicycle tire that I saw, as well as a post from a picket fence. I also find a fedora hat, a brilliant blue tail feather, a spool of ribbon, and a welcome mat. I carry them all back to the barn.

I arrange the tiny bears on the spokes of the bike wheel, and I tie them on with the ribbon. I stick the feather into the hat, but it’s not enough. It still feels sad and lonely and small. I scurry outside again, each time returning with more oddball treasures. I add to my sculpture almost frenetically. More height. More color. More movement. I don’t think about what I’m doing. I just...do. Finding some tools, I affix the bike wheel with the bears to the picket fence post so that it can rotate. I position the feather in the hat so that the bears kick the feather as they spin by. I decide I like it. Moreover, Claire would like it.

I stop.

What the hell am I doing?

I lower my face into my hands.

“You’re glowing.” Peter, behind me.

I raise my head and look at my arms. Soft white light dances between my arm hairs like static electricity. My breath catches in my throat, and I nearly laugh. Irony or bad timing? I choke back the laugh, afraid it will morph into a sob. “I lost...art?”

“You lost yourself,” Peter corrects me. “You lost your dreams, your future, your way when your mother fell sick. Your art is symbolic of all that.”

“Oh.” I stare at my sculpture and want to feel happy, whole, complete. But I can’t. “Claire’s gone.”

All the blood drains out of his face. “Claire?”

“She’s okay. I think. I think I...sent her home.” I explain what happened, how I’d accidentally mimicked what the Missing Man had done with Colin, how she’d faded and then disappeared. She’d tried to cling to me. I remember her fingers grasping at me and slipping through my sleeve, and the look on her face as if I’d shredded her world into pieces. I look at my hands. “You need to find the Missing Man again. Please. I can go home now. I can make sure she’s okay. I have to.”

He approaches my sculpture, and he spins the bike wheel. The bears revolve. I begin to feel silly making a sculpture of bears and bike parts when there are masterpieces around me.

“It’s called ‘found art,’” I say.

“Appropriate.”

“Will you do it? Will you find the Missing Man again? For me? For Claire?”

“I already found him.”

“Again, I mean. I need you to find him again.”

He looks at me as if I’m dense, and he holds up one finger. “You find what will heal the lost.” He holds up a second finger. “You send the found home. One plus one equals... ‘“She can’t do addition. Can you do subtraction? Take a bone from a dog: what remains?” Alice considered. “The bone wouldn’t remain, of course, if I took it—and the dog wouldn’t remain; it would come to bite me—and I’m sure I shouldn’t remain.”’”

“I’m not the Missing Man,” I say.

“‘“Wrong as usual,” said the Red Queen, “the dog’s temper would remain.”’”

I spin the bike wheel, and then I look up at the Rembrandt, Storm on the Sea of Galilee. I love the light on the clouds and on the water. And I understand. I have the same power as the Missing Man. “So all I have to do is click my heels three times and say ‘There’s no place like home’? I can send myself home?”

“No!” He shoots toward me but stops short of touching me. “You can’t! I mean, yes, you can, but you can’t. Lost needs you. The people here need you. You’re what stands between Lost and the void. We are, you and me, Finder and Missing Man. If you leave... You can’t leave.” There’s panic in his voice, fear, real fear.

“I have to. My mother is dying. She needs me. Claire needs me.”

He shakes his head. “You have lives here that depend on you.”

“They need the Missing Man. I’m just...me. I’m not interesting. You know that.”

“You can’t save your mother,” he says bluntly. “You can save the people here.”

His words are like bullets in my gut. “Maybe I can’t save her, but I can be there with her. She shouldn’t have to die alone.” Saying it out loud makes my stomach roll.

Peter looks as if he wants to shake me. “These people will face worse than death without you. They’ll fade. They’ll disappear. You could stop it!”

“I can’t! I have responsibilities that come first.”

“Responsibilities you fled from.”

“And that was a mistake! I shouldn’t have come here...”

“You were meant to be here.” He takes my hand. “Meant to be here with me.” He stares into my eyes and steps closer. I can feel his breath soft on my face. He leans his forehead against mine.

Suddenly, I feel as though I can’t breathe. My hand shakes. It’s still on his arm, and I know he can feel it shaking. My whole body trembles. “You’re only saying that because of these...‘powers’ I have, whatever they are.”

“I went to see the Missing Man to know if you could stay. I couldn’t let myself care about you if I thought you might leave. And here you are, with his powers, still talking about leaving. Can’t you see how much they...how much I...need you? I’m tired of being alone, Lauren. So very tired.”

I feel a lump in my throat. I swallow hard. His voice sounds so raw. His eyes... I want to reassure him. But I can’t. “I’ll come back. When I can. I won’t... I’ll come back and help. But I have to do this first. Please, try to understand.”

He steps back from me. “You won’t come back. You’ll sink into your life again, and you’ll convince yourself this was a dream or hallucination. You’ll assume the Missing Man will take care of it, that it’s not your responsibility. You have your own life, dreams, future. This isn’t real. That’s what you’ll tell yourself. And meanwhile, you will be destroying us. This. Me.”

“My mother needs me. My mother. Has there ever been anyone like that for you?”

He draws his hands away from mine. His expression is unreadable. “No.”

I suck in a breath, but I don’t know what to say to that. “No one?”

“Everyone always leaves me.” He turns his back on me and studies the bike-wheel bear sculpture. He spins it. It looks like a carnival ride, all the bright colors blurring together. “That’s what I’ve lost, Lauren. Everyone. When my parents died, I was alone. So I came here and became the Finder. This town became my family. People I found became my aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, friends. And then one by one, they left. Returned to their real lives. But this is my real life. This is my home. Finding people is who I am and what I do. And leaving me...is what everyone does. I thought you were different. Claire thought you were different.”