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who-must-be-obeyed voice. It was the one both Abra and her father knew not to argue with. Not even
Concetta could do that.
There was no discussion about Abra staying; on September ninth, she was scheduled to start the
eighth grade at Anniston Middle School. It was David Stone’s sabbatical year, which he was using to
write a book comparing the Roaring Twenties to the Go-Go Sixties, and so—like a good many of the
girls with whom she’d gone to Camp Tap—Abra shuttled from one parent to the other. During the
week, she was with her father. On the weekends, she shipped down to Boston, to be with her mom and
Momo. She thought that things could not get worse . . . but they always can, and often do.
4
Although he was working at home now, David Stone never bothered to walk down the driveway and
get the mail. He claimed the U.S. Postal Service was a self-perpetuating bureaucracy that had ceased
to have any relevance around the turn of the century. Every now and then a package turned up,
sometimes books he’d ordered to help with his work, more often something Lucy had ordered from a
catalogue, but otherwise he claimed it was all junkola.
When Lucy was home, she retrieved the post from the mailbox by the gate and looked the stuff
over while she had her mid-morning coffee. It was mostly crap, and it went directly into what Dave
called the Circular File. But she wasn’t home that early September, so it was Abra—now the nominal
woman of the house—who checked the box when she got off the school bus. She also washed the
dishes, did a load of laundry for herself and her dad twice a week, and set the Roomba robo-vac going,
if she remembered. She did these chores without complaint because she knew that her mother was
helping Momo and that her father’s book was very important. He said this one was POPULAR instead
of ACADEMIC. If it was successful, he might be able to stop teaching and write full-time, at least for
awhile.
On this day, the seventeenth of September, the mailbox contained a Walmart circular, a postcard
announcing the opening of a new dental office in town (WE GUARANTEE MILES OF SMILES!), and
two glossy come-ons from local Realtors selling time shares at the Mount Thunder ski resort.
There was also a local bulk-mail rag called The Anniston Shopper. This had a few wire-service stories
on the front two pages and a few local stories (heavy on regional sports) in the middle. The rest was
ads and coupons. If she had been home, Lucy would have saved a few of these latter and then tossed the
rest of the Shopper into the recycling bin. Her daughter would never have seen it. On this day, with
Lucy away in Boston, Abra did.
She thumbed through it as she idled her way up the driveway, then turned it over. On the back
page there were forty or fifty photographs not much bigger than postage stamps, most in color, a few
in black and white. Above them was this heading:
HAVE YOU SEEN ME?
A Weekly Service Of Your Anniston Shopper
For a moment Abra thought it was some sort of contest, like a scavenger hunt. Then she realized
these were missing children, and it was as if a hand had grasped the soft lining of her stomach and
squeezed it like a washcloth. She had bought a three-pack of Oreos in the caf at lunch, and had saved
them for the bus ride home. Now she seemed to feel them being wadded up toward her throat by that
clutching hand.
Don’t look at it if it bothers you, she told herself. It was the stern and lecturely voice she often
employed when she was upset or confused (a Momo-voice, although she had never consciously realized