The Year of Disappearances by Susan Hubbard Page B

her.
    “Catharsis, then.” She pressed down on the gas pedal, but the truck kept its own pace, barely above the speed limit. “I hate automatic transmissions,” she said.
    “ Catharsis means ‘purification.’” I stared out at the rolling green hills. “I don’t feel particularly pure.”
    “It’s not your fault that Kathleen died.” Mãe edged the truck into the right lane. “And it’s not your fault that Mysty disappeared.”
    We’d barely crossed the New Jersey state line when my cell phone rang. The Citrus County Sheriff ’s Office had tracked me down.
    The detective told me at the beginning that they were “following leads,” but that Mysty hadn’t been found. My sick feeling intensified.
    He said. “Did she say anything to you about leaving town?”
    “No.” I went over the substance of my phone conversation with her, twice. But it all seemed so trivial. “She sounded happy, yes. She had a date with Jesse that night, she said. Jesse Springer. He’s Autumn’s brother. No, I don’t know him well.”
    The detective asked where I’d been the night she disappeared, and I told him home. I knew better than to tell him about my vertigo that night, or about sensing the presence of something evil. I agreed to come in to the sheriff ’s office after we’d returned.
    “Mãe?” I said. “When will we be home?”
    The truck was merging onto the New Jersey Turnpike. “Tomorrow night, I guess. We still need to eat and sleep.”
    I told the detective that I’d come in on Tuesday morning, and hung up. “I wonder where she is.” The cab was cold, and I wrapped my arms around myself.
    “You don’t think she ran away?” Mãe drove the way she danced—smoothly and rhythmically. She rarely used brakes.
    “No.” I couldn’t picture Mysty having the gumption to run away. “She was bored, sort of, but she was in love. Or she thought she was.”
    “How about you?”
    My mother’s mind didn’t work the way my father’s did; it impulsively jumped from idea to idea, while his was methodical, even when it leapt to connect disparate concepts.
    “Are you asking if I’m in love?”
    She lifted her right eyebrow. (I couldn’t lift only one. I’d tried.) It was her way of saying You know very well what I mean.
    “No.” I said it decisively. Whatever I’d felt when I saw Michael, it wasn’t love. More like regret, for what might have been if Kathleen had lived.
    One thing I’d learned: the death of a loved one changes everything for those who survive.
    Later that day I noticed the capsules’ bulge in my jeans pocket and took them out. Mãe asked what they were, and I told her.
    “A pill to make people vampires,” she said. “Not possible.”
    “I thought maybe we could have them analyzed.” I wondered who was selling the stuff.
    “Good idea.” She flicked the truck’s turn signal. “We’re in Maryland now. I say we stop for lunch. We’ll find a good seafood place.”
    I said okay, even though I didn’t have much appetite.

    We stopped for the night at a hotel in South Carolina and got an early start the next morning. We drove into Homosassa Springs as the sun was setting. It sank between patches of trees, a fierce tangerine-colored orb.
    As the truck idled at a traffic light, I saw, stapled to a power post, the first sign: MISSING , the headline read. A photo of Mysty (younger, wearing no makeup) smiled beneath the words. The sight of it chilled me, made her disappearance not an absence, but a scary presence.
    The light changed and we drove on. The poster was on every third electric pole.
    When we finally turned onto our road, and into our driveway, I felt weary relief. This was home, not Saratoga Springs. Lights within the house glowed yellow through the windows (real windows—the glass had been replaced). Forever after, yellow lights against a darkness have meant home for me, and home always signifies love and mystery.
    Dashay didn’t wait for Mãe to switch off the engine before she