She held the Polaroid up to her phone camera.
“I need you to look at this,” she said.
When she showed him the image, all the color left his face. She watched it happen through her phone screen.
“Where did you get that?” he said.
“I was on Route 9. A man changed my tire and left it on my seat when I wasn’t looking.”
“Margaret.” His voice had gone careful. “Do not go to that address. I need you to wait for me.”
“Tell me what you know.”
He said: “There was a man named Roy who worked maintenance along Route 9 during the years around Daniel’s disappearance. We questioned him during the search. He said he hadn’t seen anything. If that address is connected to him, and if that boy in the picture is Daniel—”
“That’s my son.”
A pause. “Then I missed something I should have found.”
She was already starting the car.
“Margaret. Do not do this alone. I’m coming now.”
She was already on Route 9, heading toward the address written in shaky handwriting on the border of the photograph.
What She Found at the Small House With Wind Chimes on the Porch, and What the Woman at the Door Said
The house was ordinary in the complete way that ordinary is its own kind of camouflage.
Toys in the front yard. Wind chimes on the porch. A truck in the driveway. A garden along the side that someone had been keeping up. She sat in her car for a moment looking at it, because some part of her needed to confirm that this was real — that she was parked in front of an actual address on an actual street, and not inside the specific kind of dream that sometimes sent her down Route 9 in her sleep.
She got out of the car. She was still holding the Polaroid, gripping it so hard the edges had bent.
The front door opened before she reached the porch.
A woman stood in the doorway. Thirties. Dark hair. The expression of someone who has been expecting something and is now not sure she’s ready for it to arrive.
A small boy appeared behind her in the hallway, clutching a toy dinosaur. He looked about four or five.
“Grandpa?” he called.
Margaret’s knees went uncertain.
The woman looked at Margaret. Then she looked at the Polaroid in her hand.
“Oh God,” she said.
