Did Bob still go to counseling? Blake had gone a half dozen times and then refused to go anymore.

The day Jenny went missing was the day our family shattered. As the hours stretched into days and then weeks, I shut down. Bob accused me of being cold. Of the two of us, I’d always been the realist. Certainly, I’d have liked to imagine that Jenny had fallen and hit her head and forgotten who she was. Or that she’d been forced to steal the money or perhaps been trafficked and now was too embarrassed to come home. But of course those things weren’t true, so I’d had to accept that our daughter was dead. I wanted to believe that it happened quickly and she hadn’t suffered.

But that was probably as much a fantasy as Bob’s belief that she was alive and we just needed to find her.

After Jenny went missing, Blake started spending all his time at his friends’ houses. At first because their parents could give him the things we couldn’t—regular meals, a schedule, adults who weren’t shouting or weeping. But when we tried to resume our lives, Blake still chose to be with his friends as much as possible. I remember surfacing once to think how strange it was that we had become like distant relatives to our own son, trying to maintain contact with phone calls and regular visits.

While Blake found replacement families, I didn’t want to keep pretending that we were a real family anymore. It was just too painful. Except that once Bob moved out, I didn’t feel any better. I had craved silence, but it turned out that being alone in a quiet, empty house was worse.

The only pleasure I could look forward to was taking a small purple sleeping pill every night. Once I had emptied all those tiny pills into my palm. If my daughter was dead, I wanted to be dead, too. Something made me pour them back into the bottle.

I didn’t even feel human anymore. Most of the other humans I interacted with seemed as stupid as lambs being raised for slaughter. Not realizing their days were pointless and would soon end.

The only ones who could reach me were those parents who had survived the death of a child. For a few minutes, I could respect their pain. But even then, I found it didn’t last. Yes, your five-year-old might have died from cancer, but at least you’d been there for those last moments. At least you knew what happened. Yes, you might have lost your twelve-year-old to a drunk driver, but now you’d be able to go through all those stages of grieving: denial, anger, whatever.

I was stuck.

That’s why when I heard about In Trevor’s Memory, I knew I had to volunteer. All the volunteers had one thing in common: missing children. Some eventually found. Many not.

For another mother or father, I could be the person I had needed when Jenny was taken from us.

And now I would be that person for Lorraine Taylor.

SIR

Rex knew enough not to try to follow me into the RV, but his front paws were on the top step. “Raus!” I ordered him. Out! He backed off, his desire battling with his fear.

I understood how he felt.

After closing the door, I set down the supplies I had bought at Michaels crafts, including a pair of cheap white satin gloves. I would cut the fingers off one and then slide it up her arm. Then I would dip the plaster-of-paris bandages in water and wrap them around the glove.

I came to a halt in the bedroom doorway. Even though more than thirty-six hours had passed, the two girls were nearly just as I had left them. The new girl lay on her back under the covers. Jenny was curled on top of the comforter, facing her.

And they were both absolutely still. Unmoving.

My breath caught in my chest. Could they be dead?

A jolt ran from my head to my heels. But it was followed by something unexpected.

Relief. I didn’t have to figure out what to do about Jenny, with her ruined face. I didn’t have to decide if I wanted a second broken girl.

My shoulders loosened. I took a deep breath of the RV’s stale air.

And then Jenny’s eyelids fluttered open. I turned on the light.

“How’s my patient?” I asked.

“She’s still asleep.” Jenny rubbed her eyes and sat up.

The new girl didn’t even twitch. I squeezed between the bed and the wall and sat next to her. Her splint rested on top of the comforter. Her fingers were swollen and red. Not at all the condition I had hoped to find them in. Casting her wrist would have to wait.

She lay flat on the pillow, her eyes closed. The left side of her face was scabbed. It looked bad, but of course Jenny’s face was much worse. And it would never get any better.

The undamaged side was pale, but her cheek was flushed. Now that I was close, I could hear her fast and shallow breathing. Could she have an infection even though the broken bone hadn’t pierced the skin? Or maybe she had picked up some kind of germ when her face scraped along the roadway.

When I laid a hand on her forehead, her skin was cool. But it was also damp, clammy with sweat. A wave of disgust rolled over me. I jerked my hand back and then wiped it on my coveralls.

I looked at Jenny. “Has she been like this the whole time?”

“Savannah? Pretty much.”

I tilted my head. “How do you know her name?”

Jenny’s gaze darted to the other girl’s face. “Um, I looked in her wallet.”

I glanced back at Savannah. Her eyes were still closed. But for some reason, I felt like she and Jenny had just exchanged a look.

Maybe it had been a mistake, putting them together. I could pick this girl up and carry her out the door right now. Walk a hundred feet, and put her in the other RV I had hauled here a month ago. I had already set it up with clothes and kitchen supplies and everything she might need. All of it bought cash-only at the Salem Goodwill, over an hour away. I hadn’t wanted to risk running into someone who knew me. Someone who would wonder why I was buying clothes for a teenage girl when I didn’t have children. When, as far as they knew, I didn’t even have a girlfriend. The whole time I had worn a baseball cap pulled low over my eyes, in case the store had security cameras.

It had been exciting getting everything ready for her. It had been like it was a year ago, when I’d been preparing for Jenny. I still remembered the night I had first spotted her. She was locking up the door of Island Tan late at night, everything dark around her except the light over her beautiful face. I had spent a few weeks figuring out her schedule, finding the best time to take her.

And then Jenny had gone and ruined everything.

Sure, she was compliant. She called me Sir, the way I taught her to. She followed all the rules. She trembled every time I entered the RV. All of those were good things.

But I couldn’t get past how her face looked now, despite my best efforts. Even if I closed my eyes, how could I want to kiss torn lips, to hear the ragged breathing through her gashed nostril?

“When she wakes up,” I reminded Jenny, “don’t forget to teach her the rules.”

Jenny nodded her head like a bobble doll. “Yes, Sir.”

I had thought Jenny could help me make Savannah the kind of girl I had dreamed of for so long. Pretty. Compliant. And afraid.

But now I wondered. Had I made the same mistake twice?

And was it too late to fix it?

The successful warrior is the average man with laser-like focus.

—BRUCE LEE