‌Ellie comes into the kitchen Saturday night when I’m elbow-deep in batter, using a spatula to beat it with all the arm strength I can muster because I can’t find the electric mixer. Half our kitchen stuff is still boxed up from the Chicago move. “What are you doing?” she asks, fastening an earring.‌

“Making chocolate-chip cookies,” I say, wiping my brow and smearing grainy batter across my forehead. Then I go back to attacking the dough. “I thought I could drop them off at Nadia’s and Mason’s houses tomorrow. You know, like a gesture of friendship.”

Ellie sidles up to the counter and tries to stick a finger into my batter, but I swat her away. “Okay, but isn’t Nadia gluten-free?” she asks.

I keep stirring until her words sink in. “God damn it,” I say, letting the spatula fall into the batter. “You’re right. Ugh. Why am I such a terrible friend?” I lift the bowl like I’m about to dump it into the sink, but Ellie stops me.

“You can still make them for Mason,” she says. “And you’re not a terrible friend. You just don’t pay attention to that kind of stuff.”

“I should, though,” I say, slumping against the counter. “Details are supposed to be my thing. How can I say I want to be a journalist when I can’t even remember that one of my best friends is allergic to gluten?”

Ellie shrugs. “Book smart isn’t people smart,” she says. “When did you get so wise?” I mutter.

But she’s right about Mason; he could use some cookies. He sobbed on Nadia’s shoulder like his heart was broken all the way through Mr. Solomon’s funeral yesterday. When I shot her a quizzical look, she whispered, “They used to be close.” Which feels, again, like the kind of thing I should have known.

“I have always been so,” Ellie says breezily. “You just never appreciated it until your social circle shrank to”—she gazes around the kitchen with an expectant air, like she’s waiting for party guests to arrive

—“me.” I flick a dish towel at her, and when she darts away, her skirt swishes and I notice how cute she looks.

“Why are you all dressed up?” I ask.

“I’m going to the movies with Paige Silverman,” she says, glancing at the clock on our microwave. “Her mom will be here any minute.”

“Is this a date?” I ask.

“Mayyyyybe,” Ellie says coyly. “If she’s lucky.” A horn beeps outside, and she lunges for the bowl and snags a fingerful of cookie dough before I can stop her. “That must be them,” she says, sticking her finger into her mouth. Then she makes a face and spits the dough into the sink. “Brynn, ew. How much salt did you put in this? It’s horrible.”

“I put what the package said,” I say, picking up the discarded chocolate-chip bag so I can peer at the back. “A tablespoon.”

“Let me see.” Ellie takes it from me and shakes her head. “T-s-p means ‘teaspoon,’ not ‘tablespoon,’ you nitwit. You put in three times as much salt as you should have.”

“God damn it,” I say with a rush of fury that I realize is out of proportion for the situation, even as I slam the bowl into the sink. This time Ellie makes no attempt to stop me.

“Buy him some Chips Ahoy! instead. On that note, have a good night!” she calls on her way to the door.

I sink into a chair at the kitchen table when she’s gone, contemplating all the poor life choices I’ve made recently that have left me home alone on a Saturday night with no company except oversalted cookie dough. I lift my phone and flick through my texts in case I missed a new one, but I didn’t. Then I open my Gmail and read the Union Leader article again, even though I know it by heart.

If Mr. Larkin is really William Robbins from New Hampshire, is Michael Robbins, the little boy, the brother Mr. Larkin told Paul Goldstein about? The one he took the job at Saint Ambrose for? If yes, there’s a good chance that Mr. Larkin was talking about one of my classmates. But he must not have made contact, because whoever it was didn’t say anything when Mr. Larkin died.

I keep studying Lila Robbins’s high school yearbook photo, torn between thinking she looks familiar and thinking I just wish she looked familiar. Lila was generically pretty at age eighteen, but who knows what she looks like now? If she was twenty-six when she disappeared fourteen years ago, she’d be forty now.

I Googled Dexter Robbins last night, and couldn’t find any results except the minutes of a town hall meeting three years ago where he was vehemently opposed to a property tax increase. Lila Robbins is a ghost; the only mention I could find of her was the Union Leader article about her and Michael’s disappearance. If Dexter is still looking for them, he hasn’t gone to the press about it since that first article painted him in such a bad light. Lila and Michael are nowhere to be found. Maybe because, like their neighbor insinuated, they don’t want to be found.

I open my camera and scroll through the evidence photos I took, back when I had access to Motive’s files. There’s the bloody rock that still makes me shudder. The silver chain that continues to confuse me, because I never saw Mr. Larkin wear anything like that, or any jewelry at all. And the turquoise, sticker-covered envelope that—

Oh. Oh my God.

The memory crashes over me like a wave and leaves me just as breathless. I know where I saw the envelope now, and it definitely wasn’t at Saint Ambrose. I leap to my feet and grab for my keys because here, finally, is something I can do.

—

When Charlotte answers her door, she is not, to put it mildly, happy to see me.

“I’m not having a party,” she says, although she’s certainly dressed for one. Our home-on-a-Saturday-night wardrobes are nothing alike, so I’m guessing she has Shane in there somewhere. Charlotte is wearing a glittery black top over jeans; her lips are bright red and her eyes are dusted with shimmery powder. I, on the other hand, realize I still have cookie dough on my forehead, which I hastily rub off when I see her eyes stray toward it. “And even if I were—”

I stick my foot in the door before she can close it. “I’m looking for Tripp,” I say.

“Haven’t seen him,” Charlotte says coolly. She’s a much better liar than Tripp is, so I might have believed her if Regina hadn’t told me that she saw him getting into a black Range Rover this afternoon. I’ve seen Charlotte’s car in the Saint Ambrose parking lot, and it’s not the type I typically catch sight of in Tripp’s neighborhood.

“Charlotte, please. It’s important.”

“Oh?” She lifts perfectly shaped brows. “It was important when I asked for his address too, but you wouldn’t give it to me.”

“Okay, but seriously, how do you not know that?”

“Bye, Brynn.” Charlotte tries closing the door again, and I wedge my foot in farther.

“Can you just tell him I’m here?” “You should try texting him.”

“I did,” I say, my frustration growing. “He’s not answering.”

“Then take a hint,” Charlotte says, and this time she manages to shut the door in my face. After that, since the entire front of the house is windows, I get to watch her ponytail swinging as she walks away from me and disappears around a corner.

“Ughhh,” I mutter, kicking her front stoop. I knew this was a long shot, but I was still hoping Tripp might come to the door.

I make it about halfway to my car before I turn and look at the house again, hands on my hips. Tripp wasn’t inside the last time I went looking for him at Charlotte’s house, so maybe he isn’t now either. I creep along the side of the house, hoping I can get into the backyard from there, but it’s all fenced. I wander for a few yards until I catch sight of a light burning in Charlotte’s fancy shed. Or maybe it’s not a shed after all.

Tripp must have climbed the fence in order to get onto that stone pillar he was sitting on the last time I found him here. If he can do it, surely I can too.

I don’t see how I can scale the wrought-iron part of the fence, though; the spikes on top look as though they could impale me. The stone pillar seems like a better bet, but the rim around the bottom is too low to the ground to provide much of a boost. I cling to the flat top of the pillar and try digging the toes of my boots into the rough stone as a foothold but only manage to get myself about six inches higher. As soon as I try to move, I slide right back down.

The only way to the top, apparently, is by doing a giant pull-up, and I now recognize the flaw in my plan. Tripp is a foot taller than me and has a lot more arm strength. Still, I have to try. I’m clinging to the flat top of the pillar, muscles tensed, when a voice slurs, “What—and I cannot stress this strongly enough—the fuck are you doing?”