For a moment, seeing the lumpy chairs and a stack of picture books splayed across the worn carpet, where some kid must have left them, she had the overwhelming urge to curl up and go to sleep. But she kept going, toward the back door, which opened out onto a narrow spit of gravel that divided the library from the post office.

She darted through the rain again, hands up, as if she could fend off the assault from above. It wasn’t until she tried the door handle and found it locked that she remembered that it was Sunday and the post office was closed. She cupped her face to the glass, blinking rain away. Dark. She banged on the door anyway, and rattled the door handle. Irrationally, she felt she had to get in. It was the only way she would know for sure; and if she didn’t know, she would die.

She aimed a kick at the door, half hoping the glass would shatter. It didn’t, of course. Suddenly, the urge to cry—which she had been keeping back, swallowing down—became too much. It crystallized in the back of her throat, and became a word.

“Mom,” she called out, into the empty air, into the rain. She had the sudden sense of being watched, an alarm pricking up all over her skin. Goose flesh. “Mom? Mom!”

Calling into the grayness, into the haze of rain, as if the moisture were a curtain and it might suddenly part to reveal her mother, smiling, walking toward her with open arms.

Nothing. Nothing but the rain spitting on the gravel. Dea was crying, now, without realizing it. “Mom!” She took the door handles and rattled them again, desperate, not thinking straight. “Mom. Where are you?”

There was a shift in the darkness behind the post office door. Suddenly a woman materialized behind the glass—big, frowning, her face distorted by the rain. Dea stepped backward, swiping her nose with a wrist, as the woman unlocked the door.

“What in the devil are you doing here?” she said. She was wearing sneakers, jeans, and a sweatshirt printed with the faded graphic of a kitten; still, she managed to look threatening. “We’re closed.”

Dea fumbled for an excuse. “Please.” She cleared her throat. She could see the bank of post office boxes behind the woman’s bulk, glinting dully. “My mom—my mom was supposed to mail me something. A message.” Her throat was so dry, she could hardly swallow. “I just need to look—just for thirty seconds. A minute, tops. Please.”

The woman gave Odea a long look up and down. Odea couldn’t stop herself from shivering. She had never felt so pathetic.

“Quickly,” the woman said, and stepped backward. “We ain’t supposed to be open.”

“Thank you.” Dea could have hugged her, except the woman definitely didn’t seem like the type who hugged. She stepped inside, grateful to be out of the rain. Her socks were soaked, and her hair dripped down her back. The woman stayed by the door, tapping a foot, keeping her eye on Dea like she might try to steal something. “Not even supposed to be here myself,” she was saying. “Left my cell phone on Friday, been hunting around for it all weekend . . .”

Dea squeaked over to her mom’s post office box. Her fingers were raw and clumsy from the cold, and it took her a minute to work her key in the lock, and another second before she could summon the courage to open it. She didn’t know what she wanted more: for the money to be missing, or not.

“Course now the damn thing’s dead, don’t know why they can’t make a phone last longer than a hour, seems like they can do just about everything else nowadays . . .”

It was all there—envelopes full of cash, neatly rubber banded together. Dea felt a surge of triumph—Miriam hadn’t run, after all—followed by a wave of dizziness. That meant she’d been forced or nabbed or stuffed in some psycho’s trunk.

She angled her body so she was blocking the contents of the mailbox from view, then stuffed an envelope of cash in the waistband of her jeans, concealing it behind her T-shirt. That would be five hundred dollars at least, enough to get her through a few weeks on her own. On her own. She felt sick; she’d never before considered just how very alone she was without her mom.

“You get everything you need?” the woman asked, as Dea crossed her arms and headed back out into the storm.

“Yeah,” Dea said, even though it was a lie—she had nothing, knew nothing, understood nothing. She was sure of only one thing: whether or not her mom was a liar, and a thief, and maybe even a crackpot, she hadn’t gone away on her own or because she wanted to. She hadn’t left Dea behind.

Back in the VW, Dea checked to see whether the cop was still waiting for her. He was, of course. She was gripped by a total-body fury. The police were supposed to help, but they wouldn’t. They would do nothing.

She took a hard right out of the lot, pressing hard on the gas, without knowing where she was going—she had the sudden, vengeful urge to waste the cop’s time, to lead him out into nowhere while he tooled behind her in his truck, trying to look inconspicuous. She would drive and drive and he would have to follow her until nowhere.

She took her next left at the last moment and he barely made the turn. She gunned the accelerator, speeding hard through sheets of water, the windshield wipers dancing frantically across the glass. Fuck him. She took another right and the tires skidded on the road; the wheel jerked under her hands and she overcorrected, nearly plunged into a ditch, then managed to bring the car into the right lane. She was driving crazily, dangerously, but she didn’t care. The truck was still on her ass, closing the distance now, no longer worried about staying in the background.

She went faster. Water planed out from her wheels, and the sky looked like it was coming down, like something you’d see in a dream just as it started to dissolve. Thank God the roads were empty. She could hardly see twenty feet in front of her, even with the brights on: just wetness coasting across pitted dirt lanes, and wind lashing the fields into the ground. Left. Then another right. She had no idea where she was. She’d left the town of Marborough behind. There was nothing out here but muddy tracks of grass and dirt, big burnt-looking trees and some straggly evergreens, sagging toward the earth, and rain, and more rain.

Another right. She pivoted quickly in her seat, taking her eyes off the road, to check whether the cop was still following her. She didn’t see him. Maybe she’d managed to leave him behind.

She turned back to the road and then it happened. She was moving through a sheet of rain; and then the rain began to change, to flow differently, to solidify. The water rose and joined and twisted into a shape. She slammed on the brakes, but it was too late.

The water wasn’t water anymore, but two figures walking toward her. Even though they had no faces, she could tell they were smiling.

She screamed and wrenched the wheel to the right. The car jumped the gutter and plunged into the field. The wheel jerked out of her hands. She bit down on her tongue and tasted blood. Then the black arms of the trees reached out to embrace her, and she moved into the dark.

TWELVE

When Dea woke up, she was staring at the high, round Cyclops-eye of a single light fixture, fitted in a blank white ceiling. Her throat was raw, as if it had been scrubbed with a Brillo pad. The air was filled with a quiet mechanical hum, and from some distance came the echo of voices and the beeping of hidden machinery.

A hospital. Obviously, a hospital.

She tried to sit up but couldn’t make it far. She was constrained by multicolored tubes running to and from her wrists, pumping blood out and liquid in. Two needles were threaded into the veins on her hand, distorting the skin slightly. She felt faint twinges of pain in her neck and shoulders when she moved. But she could move her legs and wiggle her toes. She wasn’t in a body cast. She could breathe.