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that night. I didn’t get home till two in the morning.
    “I knew something was wrong as soon as I pulled into the driveway. Eddie’s pickup was there, but it had jumped the curb. It was parked half in our yard, half in the road. Its driver-side door was hanging open. The front door of our house was wide open, too.
    “The first thing I noticed when I stepped inside the house was the smell of blood. It was so strong I could taste it.
    “I found Eddie in the hallway. Somebody had...blown his head off. With a shotgun. He was lying on his stomach and his...brains...were splashed all over the carpet.
    “I ran to Sophie’s room, screaming her name. But she was gone. There weren’t any signs of a struggle. Her bedroom looked just like it always did, except some of her clothes were missing. Her closet door was open. Her dresser drawers had been pulled out. Like she’d packed her stuff in a hurry.
    “We were getting along so well, finally building a life together. I never should’ve insisted that she come live with us. Aunt Patty was right. She was happy up there. Safe. Now I don’t know whether my daughter is alive or dead. And it’s all my fault.
    “Oh, God, it’s all my fault ...”
     
    †
     
    When she was done Melissa sank even further into her seat, and from the back of her throat came a moan of despair. Her hands splayed out before her on the tabletop, as if she feared she might fall off of this world if she didn’t hold on to something.
    “I’ll be damned,” said Nick. “I’m a grandfather ?”
    “It’s true.”
    “I can’t believe your mother never told me.”
    “ No one knew. We had the arrangement with Aunt Patty. By the time I got pregnant, you were barely calling more than once or twice a year. Mom thought it wouldn’t matter one way or the other if you did know.”
    Nick had never felt so low.
    “I didn’t say that to hurt you,” she assured him.
    “No. If the shoe fits, right?”
    In her distressed features Nick could see the little girl his daughter had once been. A child he had barely known, but whom he recognized, however vaguely.
    He shifted in his seat, decided there would be time for apologies later. “What are the police saying about this? There must have been some kind of search party?”
    Melissa picked up her battered pack of cigarettes, but then realized she had already smoked her last one. She cursed under her breath, let the empty pack drop back onto the tabletop.
    “They made a big show of it at first,” she said. “A bunch of guys from the Rescue Squad dragged the river. That was the hardest thing I ever had to watch. Sheriff Mackey keeps telling me he hasn’t given up, but then in the same breath he says most missing teenagers are missing because they want to be. Thing is, to the cops Eddie was just a piece-of-shit drug dealer. They’re not in any hurry to arrest whoever killed him.”
    “Wait,” said Nick. “You don’t mean—”
    “They think Eddie...touched her. That maybe he’d been doing it for a while, and she finally had enough.”
    Nick swallowed a sick taste in his mouth. “Melissa, forgive me. Could they be on to something?”
    “No way. Eddie wasn’t a good guy, I know that. But he never would’ve laid a hand on Sophie.”
    Nick nodded, though he refused to rule anything out for now. “She’s a suspect, then?”
    “Not officially. But they keep calling her a ‘person of interest.’ Whatever that means. They even questioned Aunt Patty at one point. They thought she might be hiding Sophie away. Of course, we’re not on speaking terms anymore. Aunt Patty blames me for everything.”
    “What do you think happened that night?” Nick asked her.
    “I think Sophie witnessed Eddie’s murder. And whoever killed him kidnapped her ’cause she’d seen too much.”
    “What about his truck? You said it was sitting up on the curb when you got home, with the door open. Sounds to me like he might have been running from somebody.”
    “That’s what I