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“Just show her, Doug,” she insisted. “She was a Researcher long before you were even born.”

In a move that was so dramatic that I knew Roxy was rolling her eyes, Doug reached into his shirt and pulled out a simple chain on which a thumb drive was attached. He slid a laptop out of a beat-up satchel alongside of his chair and opened it. After plugging in the memory stick, he huddled over the screen, keeping the keyboard close, so no one could see the passwords he was furiously typing.

After a few moments, he placed the laptop on a coffee table and swiveled it around towards me. “This is part of what we’re prepared to share with you, if we can come to an agreement. But I must strongly warn you—”

“Doug, play it,” Barbara said wearily. “And turn up the volume. It’s hard to hear.”

He reached over the screen to punch the volume key several times, and then hit the space bar. The blue video screen turned black, then the grayish-white image of a man sitting in a chair came into view.

Converted from film on which it was first recorded, the video occasionally flickered, showing the man dressed in all black, his hair slicked over, with the kind of hard part that was so popular when I was a little girl.

“I can’t hear anything,” Roxy said.

“It’s coming, give it a second,” Doug scowled.

“Are you comfortable?” the man in the video said, his voice hollow, recorded on a microphone that was too far away from its subject.

The man leaned forward. “Can you tell me about what you saw?”

The film quality was so poor that I could barely make out that he was beginning to take notes.

“What do you remember about the ship in the sky?”

Doug reached over and snapped the computer closed. He stared at me, holding his chin high.

“What you’ve just seen is the first proof ever recorded of a government operative questioning someone who’d been abducted.”

That’s your proof?” Roxy asked. “How does that prove anything—?”

“Where did that come from?” I asked softly.

“I wish I knew. Steven obtained it. But there’s much more. And while we only have footage of the operative asking the questions, at the end, the camera moves a bit, and for a second you see whom he is talking to. I’m willing to show it to you, as well as all Steven’s latest findings and research about the missing. It might help you too, because I know you think your grandson’s been abducted too. There’s one thing I’d ask for in return.”

He leaned forward. “Go public. All out. Press conference and everything. Admit your past as a Researcher and how you feel your grandson has been abducted. Say that you’re working with us to find him. The hope is that Steven will see it, wherever he is, and get back in touch with us. Or maybe even you.”

I put my hand to my chest. “I can’t… do that.”

“Why?” Doug asked sharply.

“I can’t.”

“Then we tell you nothing.” He waved his hand. “You once supported our efforts. You believed in it; Steven told me everything. Everything. Now your own grandson has gone missing, and you won’t come forward with support for us? Do you care that much more about your husband’s image than finding your grandson?”

I grabbed my purse. “It was a mistake coming here.”

“Lynn,” Barbara pleaded.

“I won’t be forced into anything.” I stood. Roxy joined me, chewing her cheek.

“Then you leave here with nothing.”

“Doug!” Barbara said.

“Trust me, you want to see this entire film. But not without a guarantee.”

“You are terrible people,” I said, hurrying towards the stairs. Barbara stood, but Roxy held up a warning hand.

“You should be ashamed,” Roxy scolded, wagging her finger. “Giving a grandmother false hope and all that. You’re nut jobs, every last one of you. And don’t think I won’t call the cops on you all.”

“You won’t,” Doug said. “Because it will all be traced back to Lynn, and apparently her public persona is more important than her grandson.”

“Eat shit, you little punk,” Roxy said, catching up with me at the top of the stairs as I stepped through the shell of the fridge.

We hustled through the house and out the door, Roxy’s hand on the small of my back. I heard the truck unlock and practically ran around to get inside the cab.

My face was buried in my hands when she turned the key. “Oh, Lynnie.”

“Drive, Roxy. Drive to the hotel and get our things, and then drive all the way home. Don’t stop.”

“Honey, let’s think about this—”

“No, I want to go home.”

“Of course.”

I heard a rap at my window and turned to see Doug standing outside, shivering. He’d clearly run out after us, for he wasn’t wearing a coat.

“Lynn, this isn’t only about William.” He was practically yelling.

“Back away from the car, you asshole,” Roxy said.

“You’ll never know. You’ll never know the truth—“

Roxy threw the truck in reverse with such force that Doug stumbled back.

Outside, a bit of ice began to fall. It had been spring when I last left Champaign. It was fitting that it was winter now, and the air smelled like a snow. I was right to leave here and never come back. I prayed for the kind of whopper where snow covers the entire town. I could leave knowing everything here would be buried.

TEN

The silence in the truck was interrupted occasionally with my sharp intake of breath. When Roxy tried to comfort me, I shook my head. When we got into Nashville and neared the house, I proclaimed my stupidity for even suggesting the journey to Illinois. I insisted that I wouldn’t put my family through any more agony, that we were never again to discuss what we had seen or learned. Roxy implored me to reconsider, said we should, at the very least, go to the police with the information that Steven had a map of the property and vanished at roughly the same time William disappeared.

“No,” I said simply. “We’d be wasting their time.”

Thus I perfected the art of denial.

The smells were my greatest ally. The earthy pine, the cinnamon candles, the burning of dry wood. Baking pumpkin bread, tangy oranges in bowls, and brewing flavored coffee were more powerful now than the things that once soothed the anxiety I routinely felt with the approach of the holidays. The idea of all those gifts to buy, all that wrapping, all that traffic, used to be balanced out by the white lights wrapping the trunks of the trees outside the house and Johnny Mathis holiday music. All those worries were petty and meaningless now, and no amount of music or decorations could lift my spirits.

So I relied on the scents of the season to smother my sadness. When I practically moved into the Rose Peddler, which we transitioned into its seasonal holiday phase, I inhaled deeply as I thoroughly checked each tree brought in from McMinnville for any traces of blight. When I was in the house, amidst the Christmas trees I couldn’t bear to give more than a passing glance to, I put spices in a pot on the stove to simmer. My tall coffee mug was always in hand at the Green Hills mall, my nose kept close to the rim as I tried not to cry purchasing gifts for the grandkids, knowing who wouldn’t be there on Christmas morning. When he was home on the weekends, Tom occasionally complained his allergies were kicking up because a candle seemed to be burning in every room.

Roxy kept the festive music at a lull in the store, but flooded the place with candies and freshly baked cookies to give to children as their parents fretted over finding the perfect tree. When Roxy caught me glazing over while looking at the small children, she rushed to the house and grabbed a bunch of buckeyes out of the fridge, returning as quickly as possible to fill the shop with peanut butter and chocolate.