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again, and look up at him, at those tangled eyes of his.
    H
e says thank you, then, he does, he puts his hands on my shoulders as if to hug me and he nearly hugs me but instead slips
     his fingers around one braid and tugs it soft and smiles. His face is popping with light and I feel my neck flushing, my face
     too, because I thought he might hug me, I did. Or throw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes when we were little and
     underfoot and he would swing Evie and me to and fro with our pigtails swaying and our squeals so loud and Dusty sitting at
     the kitchen table doing long division and yelling at us to stop and she always hated it when Mr. Verver played with us. But
     soon enough he hoisted her too, hoisted us all, one by one, from kitchen to living room, and flung us onto the sofa, the laugher
     was loud, Mrs. Verver running down the stairs to see who was on fire…
    Mr. Verver is talking with the detectives in the backyard. They’re all circling the cigarette pile like it’s a bonfire.
    I’m watching through the kitchen window, the coffeepot chugging.
    Sometimes, at night, he’s out here.
    That’s what Evie had said.
    When she said it, it was just a cold-spiny feeling, a bit of nighttime spookiness. But later, it snuck back into my thoughts,
     and I wondered about all the boys who trailed Dusty, who swarmed her in the school corridors, who wedged notes in her locker
     and buzzed around her. So many of them might flit around at night, like Bobby Thornhill, might conspire to watch for her,
     might end up, even, in the backyard, mistaking Evie’s window for hers.
    I thought, nastily, of their disappointment, catching a glimpse of Evie’s post-rail frame, her barely bud breasts, lying on
     her bed, her stick legs crossed, rocking gently, her white socks with pom-poms jittering.
    Mr. Verver walks into the kitchen, his whole body jumping with energy. “They think it could be something,” he says. “They
     don’t know, but they think it could be.”
    I feel a tingle on my tongue. I feel it because I think, Doesn’t he see what this means? Isn’t this scarier, a hundred times,
     the idea that wherever Evie is she might be with someone who watched her, for nights on end, from the dark sweep of a backyard
     tree, who watched, unhurried, unbothered, puffing and breathing and watching and—
    Something clicks and shutters in my head, and there it is, there it is, tumbling from my half-open mouth:
    “The car. Twice. I saw a car go by twice.”
    “What?” Mr. Verver says, cautiously, gently, his fingers touching the edge of the counter. “A car?”
    “The maroon car. When we were waiting for my mom, it went by twice. At least twice.” I feel very excited, bobbing slightly
     as I stand, sneakers tapping the linoleum.
    “Do you know what kind of car, Lizzie?” he asks, and his eyes are suddenly so bright, so clear.
    “I don’t know.” I can barely say it. “But… but I know that car. I’ve seen that car.”
    I’m not even sure what I mean when I say it, but it’s true.
    T he detectives, perched all around, show me pictures of cars from a big, fat binder. Pages and pages of cars. But it doesn’t
     work because it’s not how the remembering of it happened. I can’t picture the car itself, it’s the feeling when I saw it,
     the flicker of curiosity, the question dangling there,
Why is it driving so slowly, isn’t that the same car—
    A flicker, and then it was gone.
    Someone’s lost,
Evie said. Didn’t she say that?
    And I can picture almost recognizing the car in that second, that fleeting second when she spoke, the recognition hovering
     just out of my reach, I had only to tug it down.
    An hour or more passes, Mr. Verver pacing, and Mrs. Verver sedated, and me not knowing what to do, going to the kitchen to
     fill my water glass two, then three times. Once, I walk past the staircase and hear Dusty sobbing in her room.
    Finally, the phone rings and it’s for Detective Thernstrom and he