When did she become aware that a teenage girl from two towns over was missing? Days after that night with the snack tray? Weeks? She became aware in the way that people do in this age of social media—a flash across her Instagram feed, a snippet heard on the little TV in the corner of the kitchen one morning over breakfast, a Facebook post. White, upper-middle-class private school girls simply did not go missing all that often, and when they did, it was news.
Her name was Madison Miller. She was sixteen years old, a sophomore in high school. She’d gone shopping by herself at a nearby Target for supplies for a school project and had never returned. There was security footage of her entering the store and leaving the store, and nothing after that. Her car had been abandoned in the parking lot.
She’d had her driver’s license for thirteen days. She’d made only three solo driving trips before: her parents were the overprotective type. The careful type. But as it turned out, not careful enough.
“How awful!” Sherri said to the television. She was making Katie’s lunch, trimming the crusts from her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The FBI was involved: it was a suspected kidnapping. There was Madison Miller’s picture. Madison Miller was just exactly in between plain and pretty, with ginger hair, a little space between her front teeth. A center part, a teal shirt, double piercings in both ears. “Terrible,” Sherri said, shaking her head. She kept making Katie’s lunch. She sliced carrots, washed an apple.
Now here were Madison Miller’s parents, holding a press conference, begging for information that might lead to their daughter’s safe return. The dad had thinning gray hair and a strong jaw; the mom looked exactly like Madison, except with a drawn and worried face and deep purple pockets underneath her eyes.
Bobby came in then. He glanced at the TV and there was the very slightest change in his face, almost a twitch. A flash, really, and then it was gone. Was the seed in Sherri’s mind planted then?
We’ll have to get rid of her.
Madison Miller was all over the news for a week. From this Sherri learned exactly what she was wearing at the time of her disappearance: Hollister jeans, ripped at the knee, size four, a gray hoodie, pink high-top Vans, size eight. A silver ring on the middle finger of her right hand made of interlocking leaves. A charm necklace with three charms: her birthstone (ruby), the number 16, the letters MRM, for Madison Rose Miller.
There was speculation, of course. She didn’t seem like the type to run away, by all accounts, but teenagers are notorious for keeping their real selves hidden from those who love them best. That’s what the psychologist on the television said. Was she an addict? Did she have a boyfriend nobody knew about, maybe an older man? Did she have secrets?
“What do you think?” Sherri asked Bobby once. “About this missing girl?”
He shook his head regretfully. “Hell of a shame,” he said. He squinted at the photo in the paper she held out to him. “Cute girl,” he said. Then he looked at her quizzically. “Why are you spending so much time on this girl, babe? People go missing all the time. Shit happens.”
Was the seed planted then?
Once, entering a supermarket to buy a carton of orange juice and a tub of the cream cheese Katie liked on her bagels, Sherri found herself face-to-face with a poster that showed a different photo of Madison Miller than what she’d seen in the past, which was a casual family photo in front of an ocean. But now here came a school photo, fall foliage in unnatural shades of red and orange: a background. On the bottom of the poster at the supermarket was a number to call with any information: an FBI tip line. Sherri copied the number on a receipt and shoved the receipt back into her wallet.
She brought the groceries home and toasted a bagel for Katie.
What could she say if she called the FBI? Could she say, “I have a bad feeling about this”? What did she know, for sure? She knew nothing to connect Bobby and the guys with Madison Miller. She knew he had a secret computer, and she knew he engaged in business that was not quite legal. But did that make him a kidnapper? Was a bad feeling a tip? If she called the FBI, their lives would crumble around them.
“They still haven’t found the girl,” she told Bobby later that evening.
He said, “What girl?” But before he said that he paused, and she watched him arrange his face carefully. She watched him reach for the right words.
Was the seed planted then?
After that, she spent hours at her computer, getting lost in what she found. Rabbit hole after rabbit hole. Madison Miller didn’t come back, and she fell out of the news cycle. But there are dark places on the Internet where stories never die, and where they morph into conspiracy theories. Madison Miller was kidnapped to be part of a sex trade operation run by a ring of South Americans. Madison Miller was a drug dealer, a porn star, a Russian operative, a garden-variety runaway.
Sherri couldn’t stop, and she couldn’t stop, and she couldn’t stop, because she knew that Madison Miller was none of those things. She was somebody’s sister and somebody’s daughter and Bobby had said himself, Sherri had heard him: she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She couldn’t shake the thoughts. They swirled around her like tumbleweed. They were with her always, her quiet, evil companions.
And then, seventeen days after Madison Miller disappeared, a dog walker found her body.
Rebecca told Sherri that if she wanted she could bring an appetizer to share. Sherri worked all morning on individual Brie bites made in a mini muffin tin with phyllo dough. Each bite had a little dot of pepper jelly inside, like a friendly surprise. She’d found the recipe on an app Katie had kindly downloaded onto her phone. Once they got their lives in order, Sherri vowed to use the app more often.
Rebecca had explained to Sherri that the town of Newburyport did not have fireworks on the Fourth of July; instead the town celebrated something called “Yankee Homecoming” at the beginning of August and did its fireworks then. However, there was a group going out on Gina and Steve’s pontoon on the Fourth, as it fell on a Saturday. Sherri should come.
Sherri’s first thought was Hell no. She wasn’t going to leave Katie at night. But then Rebecca said, no worries, Katie could stay with Morgan until Alexa got home from work at seven thirty, then Alexa would keep an eye on them. It would give Alexa and Katie a chance to get acquainted before Sherri’s first full work shift.
“Doesn’t Alexa have plans? On the Fourth of July?”
No, said Rebecca, she didn’t seem to. She acknowledged that that was unusual, and looked troubled for a moment. Alexa’s boyfriend was out of town, Rebecca said.
Sherri debated for a long time about what to wear. She didn’t want to dress too much like her old self, but she didn’t really want to be her new self either. In the end she chose white jeans and a flowy navy blue tank top that she hoped whispered upscale nautical but worried screamed Marshalls.
Once on the boat, which was docked near Michael’s Harborside restaurant, Sherri counted six couples, plus herself and Rebecca. So not the whole squad then. Some people must be on vacation, or busy with extended families. At least half the women were wearing white jeans, and this felt like a small victory to Sherri. She had never met the husbands before, and Rebecca introduced them quickly—SteveJoeDavidHenryMattOtherJoe. They all looked more or less the same, like overgrown frat boys gone a little thick, and she felt a sharp pang of nostalgia for how she and Bobby used to make heads turn when they walked into a party together. Bobby had never let himself get soft.
But never mind all that now. She accepted a drink in a red cup that somebody handed her, and she took a sip. “Delicious,” she said. She attempted a friendly laugh but it came out more like an awkward squeal.
“Tito’s and blueberries with just a touch of tequila,” said Gina. She took the Brie bites from Sherri.
“I didn’t get a chance to make anything,” Rebecca told Gina. “I’m so sorry! The day got completely away from me.”
Gina and Rebecca exchanged a glance that could possibly have been described as frosty.
“Well, these look phenomenal, anyway,” said Gina, peering at the Brie bites.
With that endorsement, Sherri began to relax. The seats were like giant cozy couches, and there was a dark green canopy covering the captain’s chair. Steve was at the helm. The pontoon began to glide in a stately manner down the river.
Rebecca sat on one side of Sherri. On Sherri’s other side was a husband. (One of the Joes? David?)
Rebecca leaned over and said, “Joe, Sherri’s new to town. She came from landlocked Ohio, and yes we all feel bad for her, but now she’s found her way to the right part of the country. She’s never eaten a whole lobster, you know! We’re going to rectify that soon. Can you give her a little bit of a geography lesson?”
“Ohio!” said Joe. “I lived in Ohio until I was ten.”
“I didn’t know that!” said Rebecca.
Sherri flushed and ducked her head. This was okay: she was fine. She had prepared for a moment like this. Redbrick, she thought. Livingston Park. Carpenter Street.
“Cleveland,” Joe said to Sherri. “Well, just outside.”
Relief washed over Sherri. She tried to make her voice sound regretful as she said, “Oh! Too bad. We lived outside of Columbus. I don’t know Cleveland very well at all.”
Joe pointed out to Sherri that they were moving toward Amesbury, away from the mouth of the river that led to the open ocean, and that the pontoon was for inland use; Gina and Steve had another boat for the open ocean. “There’s Brooke and David’s dock,” he said, pointing. “And straight ahead is the Rocks Village Bridge, which connects West Newbury to Merrimac and Haverhill.”
“Got it,” Sherri said. She looked around and was able to appreciate the beauty of the summer evening. The threads of color still tangled in the sky. The riverfront houses with docks and boats tied up at the docks. A lone kayaker. The smell of silt and salt and summer. The Brie bites were going like hotcakes—the plate was almost empty. “I feel like I’m in a floating living room,” she said. Joe chuckled appreciatively: another small victory.
The pontoon glided; somebody refilled Sherri’s red cup; people were laughing and talking and it was all very festive. A motor boat passed them going the other way and passengers on both boats waved at one another. Sherri waved too: why not? It was the Fourth of July. The lavender evening was gorgeous. Joe had laughed at her joke. She was doing fine.
Then, almost as suddenly as a curtain dropping over a stage, darkness descended. The little bit of light left in the sky was gone.
And, bang, came a sound, bang bang bang. Each time, Sherri’s heart jumped a little bit more.
She turned away from Rebecca. “I thought you said there weren’t fireworks?” she said. If there were no fireworks, it must be gunshots. She fumbled in her bag for her cell phone. She had to check on Katie. She had to check on Katie. But there were no bars on her phone: no signal.
“Not in Newburyport,” said Rebecca. “Those are the Amesbury ones that we can hear. Are you okay, Sherri?”
“I need to get off the boat,” Sherri said, softly at first, and then, because she couldn’t help it, more urgently. There were no walls surrounding her, but somehow it felt as though they were closing in on her anyway. Her stomach lurched; her brain and heart lurched. She didn’t care who heard her, or what they thought of her. She cared only about Katie. “I don’t have a phone signal. I need to get off the boat,” she said, to Rebecca, but also to anyone who was listening. “I need to make sure Katie’s okay, I need to get off the boat. I need to get off the boat!”