"Where is Rebecca?"
Her expression changed.
"At a residential medical facility outside Millbrook."
"Why?"
Catherine looked down.
"She was missing for more than thirty years, Mara. We still don't know everything that happened to her."
I felt cold.
"Is she all right?"
"She's alive."
Catherine swallowed.
"Some days, that's the most I can say."
***
My husband Zane and I had been married thirty-five years.
We'd survived difficult jobs, the loss of our parents, financial problems, and the ordinary exhaustion of raising a child.
He wasn't a perfect man.
He could be stubborn.
Secretive.
Sometimes he acted as though protecting me meant making decisions without asking.
But he'd always been gentle with Emily.
He taught her how to swim.
Stayed awake helping with school projects.
And cried when she left home for college.
He adored her.
I had never questioned that.
But sitting in Catherine's house, I began remembering strange things.
