Tuesday, 8:16 p.m.
The doorbell rang shortly after eight o’clock.
The doorbell almost never rang. Certainly not so late in the evening.
From the kitchen, Michael heard the scrape of silverware against plates, the opening and closing of the refrigerator as Angela put the leftovers away in preparation for Michael doing the dishes. It was their usual, long-agreed-upon routine for nights when she cooked.
Then the doorbell rang.
Just a year and a half after the tragic death of his wife, Bill Price’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Summer, and her best friend, Haley, disappear. Days later, the girls are found in a city park. Haley is dead at the scene, while Summer is left beaten beyond recognition and clinging to life.
As Bill holds vigil over Summer’s bandaged body, the only sound the unconscious girl can make is one cryptic and chilling word: No. And the more time Bill spends with Summer, the more he wonders what happened to her. Or if the injured girl in the hospital bed is really his daughter at all.
When troubling new questions about Summer’s life surface, Bill is not prepared for the aftershocks. He’ll soon discover that both the living and the dead have secrets. And that searching for the truth will tear open old wounds that pierce straight to the heart of his family…
What do you remember from that day, Janet?
Janet remembered the heat. The way it shimmered in waves in the distance, making the edges of the trees, the cars in the parking lot blurry and indistinct. Wherever she stepped, the grass crackled or the dirt puffed. The heat rose through the ground and scorched her feet, even through the soles of her cheap plastic shoes.
She was seven years old and in charge of her baby brother for the first time ever.
I saw people in uniform first—two cops, two paramedics. They stood in the living room of my mom’s small house, their thumbs hooked into their belts, muttering to each other. Small talk and jokes. One of them, a cop about my age, laughed about something, then looked up and saw me in the doorway.
“Ma’am?” he said. A question. It meant: Do you have any business here?
The other cop nodded.
The detective came into the room. He wore a sport coat and tie, the collar of his shirt open. He didn’t look at Jason when he came in the room. He tossed a small notebook onto the table, pulled a chair out, and sat down. He flipped the notebook open and scanned one of the pages.
“Can I go yet?” Jason asked. “You said this wouldn’t take long.”
“Easy,” the detective said.
When I saw the girl in the grocery store, my heart stopped.
I had turned the corner into the dairy aisle, carrying a basket with just a few items inside. Cereal. Crackers. Spaghetti. Beer. I lived alone, worked a lot, and rarely cooked. I was checking a price when I almost ran into the girl. I stopped immediately and studied her in profile, her hand raised to her mouth while she examined products through the glass door of the dairy cooler.
Five police cars. Three news vans. And one coroner’s wagon.
Jenna Barton saw them as she made the turn onto the last county lane. The vehicles were fanned out around the old weathered barn, one wall collapsing in and the others hanging on for dear life.
The fields around her on either side, stretching away for miles to the edges of the county, were empty and barren,
Somehow, the dog knew he wasn’t coming back.
I picked up Frosty’s leash and jiggled it while walking to the door, but he didn’t follow. Ordinarily, that sound made him jump and run, his nails clacking against our hardwood floors, but this time he slinked away, head down, eyes averted. I called his name, but he ignored me. So I went to him.
Frosty was a big dog,