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Erin shifts uncomfortably, then rearranges the couch pillows behind her back. “We didn’t want to cause any trouble.”

Trouble—the second worst thing in Henley, coming in right behind hurting someone’s feelings. Last year Janice Pascale had slipped and blown out her knee in her backyard during a snowstorm, then crawled over two acres to her daughter’s house rather than call the ambulance, even though she’d had her cell phone on her. When asked about it in church, she’d smiled and said she didn’t want the neighbors to be upset by the sound of sirens.

This is Henley. And while any other journalist worth their stuff would press Erin about not filing a report, I have to admit, I understand completely.

“We trusted that Sheriff Foxglove would have the word out and his eyes open,” Erin goes on. “We told him what she’d been wearing and all that kind of stuff.”

“What was she wearing?” I ask, tapping the pen against my notebook.

Erin smiles for the first time, and there’s a brief flash of tears in her eyes. “Funny, I remember exactly. Denise wore a lot of black, all the time. That’s all her wardrobe was, and I wasn’t about to tell her what to wear, or anything like that. I offered to take her shopping, and she’d grab something black, then throw it in the cart and glare at me, challenging me to tell her to put it back.

“But one time—when the JCPenney was over in Gradiron—remember?”

I don’t remember. JCPenney is as dead as Randall Boggs, but I nod anyway.

“I took her there, and she was eyeing this blouse. . . . I’ll never forget, because it was so unlike her—white-and-gray pinstripe, with little blue roses. Very delicate. I had gone to the ladies’ and when I returned she was rubbing the sleeve between her fingers and pulled her hand back when she saw me, like she wasn’t allowed to touch something so nice. I pretended like I didn’t notice, but I went back the next day and bought it for her.”

Erin falls quiet, running her finger along the edge of the food tray. “Size medium,” she says, and those two words seem to puncture whatever balloon she’s been holding her grief in. Tears start to fall, and I look away, giving her a moment while I check my phone and see another text from Bristal.

Hey can I come over? Got the stuff for the ODOT ep, want to use the acid room.

I stifle a giggle, aware that this moment with Erin is the last place to be amused by anything, and respond to Bristal.

I’m not home, but go ahead. Mom is. She’ll let you in. My laptop’s on my desk.

Recording software is pretty simple to figure out.

The bubble with an ellipsis in it shows up, and Erin excuses herself to get a tissue. I nod and take the opportunity to cram a cookie in my mouth. It’s good, still warm from the oven, with an obvious overuse of butter and big chunks of chocolate.

Cool. I’ll probably bum a cig from your mom.

For the second time, she sends me the picture of my mom smoking, my dad turned in profile.

Go for it. She doesn’t smoke.

Bristal doesn’t respond with words, only the pic again, this time cropped to just my mom’s blurry face, and the cloud of smoke coming from her mouth.

“Sorry,” Erin says from the doorway. “I don’t know what got into me.”

“Emotions,” I say, after the last swallow of gooey chocolate delight slides down my throat. “We all have them.”

“Well, some more than others,” Erin says, as if embarrassed of her tears as she thumbs the last errant one away. “Would you like to see Denise’s room?”

“Sure,” I say, and follow her down the hall, though I’m not sure that it will serve any investigative purpose. As I had suspected, it’s been stripped of any sense of habitation; an old PC sits in the corner, and the closet is empty of all but three wire hangers, one of them bent and twisted.

“You’re confident she went out the window?” I ask, peering out of it.

Even though the Hendrixes live in town, their lot is heavily wooded. Denise could have easily slipped out without being seen.

“Yes,” Erin confirms. “She kicked the screen out. Paul found it in the yard in the morning, put it right back in, of course.”

I wander around Denise’s room, trying to imagine a teenage girl here, young, morose, troubled, intent on leaving. My hand rests on the old PC, a boxy thing with a monitor that could fill the back seat of my car.

“Did Denise use this?” I ask.

“No, we bought it later, once the internet was a thing. I thought maybe it could help us find her.”

“Good thinking,” I say, more to make her feel better than anything else. Bristal and I had both combed social media and come up with zilch.