“What happens now?” he asked.
I looked at Hera. We had already discussed this while waiting for him to come home.
“Now,” I said, “we find her. We talk to her. And we figure this out together.”
It took us three weeks to track Alyssa down.
The return addresses on the letters were all P.O. boxes in different cities. She had been moving constantly, never staying in one place for long.
But Bill had one piece of information he hadn’t included in any letter: a phone number she had given him “for emergencies.”
I called it on a Tuesday afternoon.
The voice that answered was hesitant, barely above a whisper.
“Hello?”
“Alyssa,” I said. “It’s Edward.”
There was a long silence.
“You know,” she finally said.
“Yes. I know.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Edward. I never meant to—”
“I know,” I said again. “But we need to talk. All of us.”
We agreed to meet at a neutral place. A small diner halfway between our town and the city where she had been living.
When we walked in, I almost didn’t recognize her.
