PROLOGUE

New York City

He lunges across Sixth Avenue mid-block and against the light, leaving in his wake squealing brakes, honking horns, angry curses through car windows.

No need to look over his shoulder; he knows they’re back there, closing in on him.

Darting up the east side of Sixth, he blows through an obstacle course of office workers on smoke breaks, tourists walking four abreast, businessmen lined up at street food carts. Ignoring the indignant shouts of jostled pedestrians, he searches the urban landscape as he runs. July heat radiates in waves from concrete and asphalt. Sweat soaks his tee shirt.

Just ahead, across Fortieth Street, he spots the subway entrance. For a split second, he considers diving down the stairs. If a train happens to be just pulling in, he can hop on and lose them–at least for the time being.

If there’s no train, he’ll be trapped like a rat in a hole—unless he hoofs it through the dark tunnel and risks being electrocuted by the third rail or flattened by an oncoming express.

No thanks.

Nothing can happen to him. Not now. Not when the plan is about to come to fruition.

Not when sweet victory is so close he can taste it like sugar. He races past the subway, his thoughts careening through various scenarios of how the next few minutes of his life might play out. They all end the same way: he’s apprehended. Incarcerated.

Even if he could possibly hide in midtown Manhattan in broad daylight with the cops hot on his trail, it makes no sense to try. The NYPD aren’t the only ones looking for him. At least if he’s arrested, he’ll be safe–for now.

But first, he has to stash the file where no one can possibly stumble across it–and where he himself will easily be able to retrieve it and resume his plan. When he’s free. Where? Come on, think. Think!

If only he had time to open a safe deposit box somewhere. If only he could bury it like treasure, entrust it to a stranger for safekeeping, throw it into an envelope addressed to a trusted friend in a far-off place… Before all this, he had a circle of confidantes. Now, he trusts no one other than Mike.

He tried to call his old friend yesterday, since he has a vested interest in this thing.

He did leave a message: “Mike, it’s me. Dude, I was right. It’s bigger than I thought. I’ll be in touch.”

Now that he’s had time to think things through, though, he’s glad he didn’t reach Mike. Better not to drag him into this dangerous game.

He bounds across Fortieth and up the wide concrete steps into Bryant Park, zigzagging northeast past dog walkers and the carousel; past stroller-pushing nannies and office workers eating lunch out of clear plastic deli containers. Approaching the crowded outdoor dining patio of the Bryant Park Cafe, he spots a commotion beside the entrance. A young wife tries to soothe the screaming baby propped against her shoulder as her agitated husband argues loudly with the hostess about a reservation. The baby’s stroller is abandoned in his path, a fuzzy pink stuffed animal lying on the ground beside it.

Seeing it, he’s struck by an idea–one that’s either so far out there it’ll never work, or so far out there that it has to work.

There’s no time to sit around considering the odds.

Rather than leap over the stuffed animal, he scoops it up as he passes, hoping bystanders are too busy watching the argument at the hostess stand to notice. He doesn’t bother to look back, and nobody calls out after him as he cannonballs down the wide concrete steps on the north side of the park.

Emerging onto West Forty-Second Street, he hurtles eastward, passing the main branch of the library. He scoots across Fifth Avenue amid hordes of pedestrians in the crosswalk, then across East Forty-Second against the red Don’t Walk sign. With the stuffed animal tucked under his right arm, high against his chestlike a football, he sprints the remaining block and a half to Grand Central Terminal.

No one–not even the national guardsmen on patrol in this post 9/11 era—gives him a second glance as he races at full speed from the Vanderbilt entrance toward the cavernous Main Concourse. Otherwise-civilized people zip pell-mell through here all the time. The MTA conducts its Metro North commuter line on a precise schedule; a few seconds’ delay might mean waiting an hour to catch the next train to the northern suburbs.

It’s been awhile, yet he knows the layout of vast rail station very well. Knows the location of the ticket counters and subway ramps, the arched whispering gallery near the Oyster Bar, the upper and lower level tracks, the Station Master’s office, the food court, the Lost and Found… The Lost and Found.

Looking furtively over his shoulder, he spots a blue uniform at the far end of the corridor. Changing direction, he veers toward the steep bank of escalators leading to the subway station below Grand Central, slowing his pace just enough to be sure the cop has time to spot him. Then he skirts down the left side of the escalator with the harried walkers, past the line-up of riders holding the rubber rail along the right.

At the bottom, he hops the turnstile. Predictably, those behind him protest loudly. He races through the familiar network of corridors to an exit and a set of stairs leading up to Grand Central Terminal again, closer to Lexington Avenue. Again, he runs toward the main concourse, emerging at last beneath the domed pale blue ceiling with its celestial markings.

He takes the stairs beneath the balcony back down to the lower level, and then ducks into a doorway leading to an empty track.

Panting, huddled in the shadows against the wall, he turns the stuffed animal over and over, looking for the most unobtrusive spot.

There.

With his index finger, he probes at a seam in the synthetic fur. The toy is well made; it takes a few moments before the stitching gives way. He creates a small tear just wide enough. Then he takes the memory stick from his wallet and shoves it into the hole until it disappears into the stuffing. Swiftly examining the toy, he convinces himself no one could possibly discover the gap in the seam unless they were looking for it.

He tucks the animal under his arm again and scurries back out into the station and down a short corridor to the Lost and Found.

“Can I help you, sir?” asks the middle-aged woman at the service window, looking up from sorting through a labeled bin marked February: Mittens and Gloves.

Winded, he holds up the stuffed animal. “I just found this.” She reaches for a pen. “Where? On a train?”

“No … on the floor.”

“Where on the floor?”

“By the clock,” he improvises.

She doesn’t ask which clock. In this terminal, “the clock” means the antique timepiece with four luminescent opal faces that sits atop the information booth, a meeting spot for thousands of New Yorkers every day.

“All right—“ She reaches for a form— “if you can fill this out and—”

“Sorry,” he cuts in, “but if I don’t catch the 4:39, my wife is going to kill me.”

“It’s only–“

He’s already out the door.

He takes the stairs back up to the main concourse two at a time. Nearby, at the base of the escalators leading up to the Pan Am building, a transit cop scans the crowd while speaking into a radio.

A moment later, the cop spots him, and he knows it’s over. For now.

CHAPTER ONE

Glenhaven Park, New York

“MOMMY, HEEEEELLLLLLLLLPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Startled by her daughter’s scream, Lauren Walsh drops the apple she was about to peel and bolts from the kitchen, taking the paring knife with her, just in case. Sadie is in the living room–in one piece, thank God, and sitting on the couch in front of the television, right where Lauren left her about two minutes ago. Tears stream down her face.

“What’s wrong, sweetie? What happened?”

“Fred! Fred’s gone!”

She immediately grasps the situation, seeing the contents of Sadie’s little Vera Bradley tote dumped on the couch beside her: a sticker album and stickers, a couple of Mardi Gras necklaces, a feather boa, and the pack of Juicyfruit Lauren bought her at Hudson News right before they got on the train. So there’s no intruder to fight off with a paring knife. She loosens her grasp on the handle, the notion of using it as a weapon suddenly seeming laughable.

Almost laughable, anyway.

Lauren has never been the kind of woman who checked the closets and under the bed. She spent dauntless years on her own, single in the city, before she met Nick.

But this is different. Living alone with a preschooler in a sprawling Victorian while the older kids are gone at sleepaway camp and their dad is–well, gone–has bred a certain degree of paranoia, no doubt about it.

“Mommy, find Fred!” Sadie’s cherubic face is stricken, her green eyes filled with tears.

Before Nick moved out last winter, Fred was just another stuffed animal on Sadie’s shelf. Someone brought it to the hospital back when Sadie was born, with a mylar It’s A Girl balloon tied to its wrist.

When Nick left, all three of the kids developed strange new habits. Ryan took to biting his nails. Lucy pulled out her eyelashes. Poor little Sadie, already a notoriously fussy eater, now lives on white bread, peanut butter, and the occasional sliced apple. She also regressed to thumb sucking and pants-wetting, and started dragging the pink plush rabbit, newly christened Fred, everywhere she went.

Which wasn’t much of anywhere until recently, because Lauren couldn’t bring herself to leave the house most days. She felt as if the whole town was talking about her husband leaving her for another woman.

Probably because they really were talking about it. In a tiny suburban hamlet like Glenhaven Park, the gossip mill runs as efficiently as the commuter train line.

“Mommy.”

“It’s okay, Sadie. Where’s Chauncey? Maybe he took Fred.” God knows their border collie has been known to steal a fuzzy slipper or two—which is why he hasn’t been allowed upstairs in the bedrooms in years.

“No, Fred wasn’t in my bag. He didn’t come into the house with me.”

“Okay, so he’s probably in the car.”

“Go look! Please!”

Lauren is already headed for the kitchen to exchange the paring knife for her keys, biting her tongue. It’s probably not good parenting to say, “I told you so” to a four year-old. But she did tell Sadie not to bring Fred with them to the city today. And when she insisted, Lauren wanted to carry the stuffed rabbit herself, worried Sadie would lose it. Sadie protested so vehemently that it was simply easier to give in. More bad parenting.

And the fact that Lauren’s about to serve apple slices with a side of peanut butter for dinner doesn’t exactly cancel it out. But why bother cooking for two—one finicky preschooler and one mom who lost her appetite, along with a lot of other things, in the divorce drama.

The screen door squeaks as Lauren steps out the back door into the hot glare of late afternoon sun. The neighborhood at this hour is so still she can hear the bumblebees lazing in the coneflowers beside the small service porch.

She could cut some of the purple and white blooms and bring them inside.

But again, why bother? It’s just her and Sadie.

Why bother … why bother…

So goes the depressing refrain.

There was a time when she didn’t consider cooking or gardening a bother at all.

She remembers wandering around the yard with pruning shears on summer days as Ryan and Lucy romped on the wooden play set. She’d fill the house with a hodgepodge of colorful flowers arranged in Depression-era tinted glass Ball jars discovered on a cobwebby shelf in the basement. Then she’d feed and bathe the kids early, letting them stay up just long enough to greet Nick off the commuter train. He’d tell her about his day as they shared a bottle of wine over a home-cooked dinner for two, something decadent and cooked in butter or smothered in melted cheese.

That was before Nick became overly health conscious—which, surprise, surprise, was not long before he left.

But she doesn’t want to think about that.

Nor does she necessarily want to think about the good old days, but she can’t seem to help herself. It was on one of those hot summer nights, Lauren recalls, that Sadie the Oops Baby was conceived, after an unhealthy, fattening romantic dinner laced with cabernet and Van Morrison.

The pregnancy put on hold their plans to remodel the house. They were going to expand the kitchen, add a mudroom, replace the back stoop with a deck–something that wouldn’t clash with the Queen Anne style. Nick was a big believer in preservation of architectural integrity.

Only when it came to marital integrity did he run into trouble. They never did get around to remodeling.

Now they never will.

Lauren gazes up at the house–two stories, plus a large attic beneath the steep, gabled roof.

The clapboard façade, fish-scale shingles, and gingerbread trim are done in period shades of ochre and brick red. The classic Victorian design—tall, shuttered bay windows, a cupola, and a spindled, wraparound porch—charmed her the first time she laid eyes on it, years ago.

Painted Lady Potential, proclaimed the ad in the Sunday Times real estate section.

She kept reading. It got better.

Four bedroom, two bath fixer-upper in family neighborhood. Eat-in kitchen, large, level yard, detached garage. Walk to shops, train, schools.

It was located, the Realtor told her when she called about the ad, on Elm Street in Glenhaven Park. Elm Street—evocative of leafy, small town charm. Elm Street—where families live happily ever after.

Sight unseen, Lauren was sold.

Nick was not. “Nightmare on Elm Street,” he told Lauren. “Ever see that movie?”

She hadn’t. But lately, she’s been feeling as though she lived it.

How did she end up living alone in the house of their dreams? She’ll never forget the day she and Nick first set foot inside, looked at each other, and nodded. They knew. They knew this house would become home.

It—like the fact that they’d found each other, fallen in love, gotten married—seemed too good to be true. They marveled at the china doorknobs, gaslight fixtures, cast-iron radiators, chair rails, and pocket doors; high ceilings with crown molding; the ornate wooden staircase in the entrance hall. There were even a couple of hidden compartments where the nineteenth century owners had stashed their valuables.

Yes, the place needed work. So what? They were young and had a lifetime ahead of them.

Now Lauren wonders, as she often has for the past few months, whether she’ll have to sell the house. Some days, she wants to list it as soon as possible. Others, she’s certain she can’t bear to let go.

What’s the old saying?

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. 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’ travel 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 back seat…

Please let Fred be in the back seat…

Fred is not in the back seat.

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, tear-stained 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 blonde 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 in 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 the 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. Awhile 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 de-personalize 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 Newsstands 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 since 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 Rob´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.

Anti-depressants, 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.

But after the tragedy, her dark hair—always kept sleek and chic—grew long and straggly. Her face, preternaturally bare of makeup, became gaunt; her figure dangerously skeletal. For a while, she honestly thought she was going to die, even if not by her own hand.

Brett and all those therapists were right, though, about her needing to find a new purpose. When she did, she slowly came back. Not back to life. But back.

Dr. Hyland was wrong. There are other options. You can curl up and die, or you can go on living … or you can, as Elsa has, settle on something in between.

* * *

Every night when Nick Walsh walks into Grand Central Terminal at rush hour, he has a single objective: getting right back out again, on a northbound train, as quickly as possible.

More than ninety-nine percent of the time, that’s exactly what happens. But once in awhile, things go wrong. A car gets struck at a suburban crossing; a tree falls across the tracks, there’s flooding in the Bronx, a power failure, ice… You never know when you’re going to be stuck here for a while, waiting for service to resume, or forced to rely on a bus or car service with tens of thousands of other stranded commuters.

That’s why, on nights like this, when everything is moving like clockwork, you don’t hang around and thus increase the odds for something to go wrong.

There’s a 6:22 leaving in ten minutes from track twenty-nine, but by the time Nick detours down to Lost and Found on the lower level, grabs Sadie’s lost toy, and makes it onto the train, there won’t likely be any seats left. He’ll have to wait twenty-three minutes for the next one, and by the time he’s walked to his building, taken his car from the garage, and driven up to the house in Glenhaven Park and back, it’ll be well past nine o’clock.

Well, if things go well in the Lost and Found, maybe he can still make the 6:22. Better to stand around on a moving train than in the station, right?

Having lied to Lauren earlier about having a late-day meeting, he just hopes karma won’t come back to bite him in the ass.

But it just slipped out. He couldn’t help it. He was irritated that she’d been in the neighborhood with Sadie, hadn’t bothered to tell him, then had the nerve to call him up and start ordering him around. She seemed to assume he had nothing better to do in the middle of a workday than go on a scavenger hunt to retrieve something that shouldn’t have been lost in the first place.

Aren’t you being a little hard on Lauren? asks an annoying little voice in the part of his brain reserved for post-marital guilt.

Maybe. But not nearly as hard as she is on me.

When he reaches the small Lost and Found office, several people are there ahead of him. One, a blond teenaged girl about Lucy’s age, is standing at the service window, scrolling on a hot pink iPod, accompanied by an equally blond friend who’s busily texting into her phone. Behind them, a middle-aged businessman impatiently checks both his Blackberry and his watch.

Taking his place on line, Nick thinks back to what the world was like in the good old days before everyone was plugged in; tries to recall whether people actually interacted with each other in public places.

At forty-five, he’s plenty old enough to remember the pre-technology era, but he’s never given it much thought. It all must have been terribly inconvenient and inefficient—communication, entertainment…

Then again, if you don’t know what you’re missing, you can’t miss it, right?

Nick thinks of his marriage.

Right. Absolutely right. All those years spent stagnating in suburbia, thinking he was content, and he had no clue. Then he met Beth. Well—not exactly. He knew Beth. Casually. He’d seen her around town, and on the commuter train. But she didn’t travel in the same circles. Her kids are older than his; in fact, Beth is a few years older than he is … not that she looks it. He never really knew her, though, until that snowy December night a year and a half ago, when they found themselves sharing a double seat on the late local home after their respective corporate holiday parties.

Glenhaven Park is almost at the end of the line. By the time they reached their stop, the rail car was all but empty. They were both tipsy. Flirting shamelessly.

He’d been too distracted to call Lauren to come pick him up. Beth had her car; she drove him home. It was snowing. Springsteen was on the car radio, singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” and it reminded him of college, and snowy nights after bars in cars with girls.

He didn’t kiss Beth goodnight when she dropped him off, but he wanted to. Damn, he wanted to. Out of the blue, he, Nick Walsh, husband and father of three, wanted to kiss a woman who wasn’t his wife.

And suddenly he, Nick Walsh—who had been estranged from his own mother for decades because she’d left his father for another man—got it.

What are you supposed to do when you meet the right person—and realize you’re married to the wrong one? Suffer on indefinitely? Or seize a chance at happiness?

That night, for the first time in years, he considered reaching out to his mother. He’d lost track of her—hadn’t even bothered to find her and let her know when his father passed away a few years earlier—but if you really want to locate someone in this day and age, you probably can.

He climbed into bed beside Lauren, sound asleep in flannel pajamas, and he thought about his mother, and then he thought about Beth.

It was the first time he ever wondered what he might be missing. And so, Beth later told him, did she. And now I know.

Good old pre-tech days forgotten, Nick checks his Blackberry. There’s a text message.

He smiles.

Did you find Sadie’s toy? Are you on the train yet?

Not yet, he texts back to Beth, and I wish.

A woman behind him emits a phlegmy cough. Hoping she covered her mouth, though it doesn’t sound like it, Nick looks up to check the progress at the counter.

“This is it,” the teenaged girl decisively informs the very patient middle-aged woman behind the counter. Then the girl turns to her friend and adds, less decisively, “Don’t you think, Miranda?”

“Huh?” Her friend looks up from her phone.

“Like, don’t you think this is my iPod?”

“Check the playlists.”

“Yeah, but everyone, like, has the same playlists as me, you know?”

“I don’t have the same ones as you.”

“Yeah, but you’re a freak.”

Miranda sticks out her tongue. “Brat.”

The businessman makes the impatient sound Nick was just about to make, sparing Nick a couple of dirty looks from the two blondes. Behind him, the woman coughs again.

“So what’s the consensus, ladies?” asks the Lost and Found woman.

The one who isn’t Miranda shrugs. “I guess it’s mine.” “Great.” She hands over a form. “You’ll need to fill this out, and I’ll need to make a photo copy of your ID.”

Photocopies? Paperwork? No way is Nick going to make the 6:22. Unless the paperwork is only for valuables?

Apparently not. The businessman, it turns out, left a five-dollar folding umbrella on a New Haven local the other morning. It takes him forever to figure out which of the couple dozen black folding umbrellas in the July-Umbrellas bin belongs to him and when at last he does, he, too, has to fill out a claim form.

Finally he’s on his way, and it’s Nick’s turn.

It’s 6:20.

“My daughter lost her stuffed animal in the station,” he tells the woman, admiring the patience in her chocolate-colored eyes. If he had to work here and deal with people all day, he’d want to kill them or himself.

“When did she lose it?”

Good question.

“Recently.” He’d assume today, considering that Lauren told him Sadie couldn’t live without it—if his ex-wife didn’t have an annoying habit of turning even minor household issues into urgent crises.

“Recently as in this week? This month?”

He nods. For all he knows, the toy has been missing for a month, but…

“She lost it in the station?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where, exactly?”

Nick quells the urge to challenge her exceeding patience and remind her that if he knew where, exactly, he most likely wouldn’t be here.

“I have no idea. She was with my wife. Ex-wife,” he amends hastily … and is rewarded with, not a dirty look, but not exactly a pleasant one.

“Do you know what the toy looks like?”

“It’s pink,” he tells her, “and it answers to Fred, and if I don’t get it back to Sadie then believe me, life as we know it is over.”

She smiles, God love her.

“You have kids,” he guesses.

“You bet. Hang on a second.”

She turns to peruse the shelf behind her, and returns to the counter with a large blue bin marked Misc: July.

“It’s pink, you said? Is it a pink flamingo?” She pulls one out.

“No. Not a flamingo.”

The woman behind him hacks away like she has tuberculosis. Repulsed, he tries to remember what Lauren said about Fred. Was he a cat? A duck? Whoever heard of a pink duck?

“Is it a dog?” She shows him one. “It’s the only other pink toy in here.”

He nods vigorously. “Yup, that’s Fred.”

“You sure? Because it’s been here for a week.”

“Positive,” he lies. “That’s when she lost it. About a week ago.”

Maybe not, but it’s pink, and it’s furry, and there are no other pink toys, and the woman behind him is coughing up God only knows what, and he’s desperate to get out of here. If it’s not Fred, Sadie will probably never know the difference. “I just need your driver’s license so that I can make a copy, and I need you to fill out this claim form.” The woman slides a clipboard across the counter.

“You actually keep a record of every single thing people lose and find around here?”

She smiles and nods. “Every single one.”

* * *

“Do you have a feeling, one way or another?” the therapist’s voice intrudes on Elsa’s melancholy thoughts.

She looks up to see Joan watching her.

“A feeling about what?” she asks.

“About whether Jeremy is alive?”

Or dead.

Ever tactful, Joan doesn’t complete the question.

The wisp of hope drifts, as it does from time to time, like a helium balloon whose string was swept beyond her grasp by a cold, cruel wind.

“What do you think, Elsa?”

In this particular moment, she doesn’t think. She knows. A mother knows.

There’s no mistaking the aching emptiness; the sense that you will never again cradle your sweet child in your arms.

“He’s dead,” she says resolutely.