• • •

On the first anniversary of Ben’s kidnapping, they had held another candlelight ceremony on the grounds of the Y. The director of the Y, Elizabeth Matthews, had suggested it and said she could arrange for a poet to give a reading and perhaps a priest to say a prayer. Everyone here wants to help, she’d said. Balloons aren’t healthy for the environment, but we could light candles again. Carrie had been noncommittal until she’d talked to John. Of course, John thought it was a good idea; he thought publicity and people were always a good idea. Better to be outside, spreading the word, than inside, ruminating.

The swim moms were there again, and so were Libby and Anna and a lot of other folks from the congregation who Carrie didn’t know. They were friends of John’s family and circled around them in a tight knot. John’s parents stood next to their son proudly, as if he were getting confirmed. Their chins were always up. Carrie’s mother didn’t fly in; Carrie had insisted she not come, but she had sent special candleholders for the occasion, as if the idea of her daughter and son-in-law getting burned by wax would be the ultimate salt in the wound.

It was a clear night, and though Elizabeth Matthews had promised the ceremony would be brief, one of the speakers—the poet—had chosen to read a long sonnet that lost focus, meandered. Under other circumstances, beneath the yoke of someone else’s grief, Carrie and John would have shared a look and a giggle over this woman and her tortured, dramatic delivery. But they kept their eyes lowered, focused on the candles. The last person to speak was a young rabbi, who offered a prayer related to the water, to swimming, and Carrie was grateful for its simple symbolism. Later she would recall its prescience and wish she could speak to the rabbi again, to see him at his temple, to know what he knew.

Afterward, after John thanked everyone for coming and then ran off toward a couple of his coworkers, whom he’d spotted in the crowd, Libby came up, put her arm around Carrie, and gripped the knob of her shoulder tightly.

“You’ll find him, lovey,” she said firmly, calmly.

“Will I?”

“We could do another collection at the church. Maybe it could pay for another billboard or increase the reward.”

“Billboards.” Carrie sighed. “His face was so large on the highway the first time I saw it, I nearly crashed.”

“It was attention getting.”

“That’s for sure. You know, we got the Amber Alert on our cell phones that first night,” she said suddenly. “Wouldn’t you think they would take the parents off the list? Out of kindness?”

“When all this is over, that’s the kind of thing you can fight for. The kind of thing that can be changed.”

Carrie shrugged. It was hard to imagine it ever being over. Hard to imagine anything changing.

The crowd thinned out. A gibbous moon rose over the building, above the dark tops of trees. Carrie couldn’t remember what the moon had been like that first night without her son. Why couldn’t she remember?

John walked back toward her, smiling, with a young woman walking briskly behind him, almost catching up to his long gait. Her hair was bobbed and spiky at the ends, and she wore large black glasses that looked almost like a prop.

“Carrie,” John said breathlessly, “this is—”

“Maya Mercer,” the woman said, extending her hand.

Carrie shifted the candle to her left hand, shook with her right.

“From 24/7,” John added.

“The TV show?”

“The investigative program,” Maya said with a half smile. A business smile.

“Oh,” Carrie said.

“Maya’s thinking about doing a story on Ben’s disappearance, and she wants to interview you!”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“Not both of us?”

“Well, you were there, Mrs. Morgan,” Maya said coolly. “Your husband wasn’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“Carrie!”

“I mean, if you’re just thinking about doing a story and not actually doing one, how would you know?”

“You’re a witness,” Maya continued. “It’s on record. Simple as that. We’d try to talk to anyone who was there—you, the detectives, other people on the street that day, at Starbucks, here at the—”

“No.”

“No?” Maya Mercer looked genuinely perplexed.

John touched Carrie’s arm. “Babe,” he started to say.

“Don’t ‘babe’ me!” Carrie said, yanking her arm away.

“Let your wife speak for herself, John,” Maya said quietly.

Carrie’s eyes met Maya’s for a moment. For a second or two, they held, seeking refuge there.

“I’m sure she wants the publicity,” Maya said. “I’m sure she has absolutely nothing to hide.”

Carrie swallowed hard, lowered her eyes. She knew the detectives were in the parking lot, surveying the crowd. Looking for anything unusual, anything amiss. She knew strangling this woman would be considered slightly amiss.

“There’s a difference between publicity and scrutiny,” Carrie said, gritting her teeth.

Maya blinked at this, considering. “Maybe you need a few days to think about it. Discuss it.”

“Just interview my husband. He’s more photogenic.”

As Carrie walked toward her car—parked a block away, pointed west, toward home—she saw Forrester standing on the sidewalk, staring across two lanes of traffic as if he were watching a movie projected on the other side.

She blew out her candle with an irritated huff. When she swung open the car door, wax sloshed onto her hand, burning her just enough to make her cry out.