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“Hi, everyone. This is Zachary Glass. He’s just been helping me paint the cat shelters I told you about, and I wanted you to meet him. Please be humans instead of jackals. Thank you.”
“Zachary, it’s very nice to meet you. I’m Mirabelle, Bram’s mother.”
“I’m Bram’s dad,” the older man said. “Trent.”
The brother who seemed even bigger than Bram waved. He was the one cooking dinner and he’d paused his activities.
“Hey, Zachary. I’m Thistle. I’m the oldest of this wolf pack. Nice to meet you.”
“Zachary, hi! I’m Vega, the youngest sister.” She smiled a sweet, wide smile that put Zachary at ease. He waved.
“Omigod, finally!” the upside-down sister said, then her screen tipped queasily, and she was right-side up.
“I’m Moon, one of Bram’s younger sisters, and I can’t help but notice that you’re—”
A hand came from behind her and clapped over her mouth, silencing her. The person belonging to the hand ducked into view and rested her chin on Moon’s shoulder.
“Hi, Larkspurs,” she said. They clearly knew her. “Zachary, I’m Ming, Moon’s girlfriend, and I would like to apologize for whatever is almost assuredly going to come out of my beloved’s enormous, rude mouth during the tenure of this call.” She grinned. Zachary grinned back at her and smoothed down his shirt.
The final sister, who was on mute and talking to her kids, unmuted and said, “Hey, Zachary. I’m Birch. These small monsters are Millie and Dorothy. Nice to meet you.”
Then everyone was silent, and Zachary saw his face in the camera, blinking at them all. Bram put a warm palm on his back and slid it up and down his spine. You couldn’t see it on camera, and it made Zachary think about all the things that could be going on in the back of all the other people’s cameras that he couldn’t see.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Zachary.” Then, compelled to use the same format as they all had, he added, “I’m Bram’s... Halloween prank war nemesis?”
The Larkspur family smiled, laughed, nodded enthusiastically, looked wryly, and nodded, respectively.
“Welcome,” one of them said, though Zachary couldn’t tell which one.
* * *
Zachary called his mom for the first time in two months. She’d left him several messages over the last few weeks, which he’d ignored. But seeing Bram’s family, so close and so joyful at one another’s company, had made him pick up the phone.
“Zacky!” she answered. The sound of her voice wound his stomach like spaghetti on a fork.
“Hi, Mom.”
He didn’t say “How are you?” because that was always an invitation for her to start talking about the case.
Not that not asking usually avoided it.
“Your father’s been having terrible reflux lately,” she said. “So he’s taking a new medication.”
She talked for several minutes about his father’s health and her friend Joanie, whom Zachary had never met and wasn’t entirely convinced actually existed since his mother’s relationship with her seemed to revolve entirely around Zumba and smoothies.
“I’m up for a promotion at work,” Zachary said. “I fly to Denver for the interview next week. If I get it, I’ll be the youngest person ever to hold the position.”
“That’s wonderful,” his mother said. “Congratulations.”
“Well, I didn’t get it yet,” he said.
“I’m sure you will, sweetie.”
Zachary began to sweat.
“No, it’s not guaranteed. It will be competitive,” he said. That wasn’t quite right, but he didn’t know how else to say it. She was congratulating him like it was nothing—a done deal, a guarantee—and it was notable, significant, a standout. Making it sound guaranteed stripped the achievement from it.
“Well, if they’re smart, they’ll pick you,” she repeated.
Zachary sighed.
“Listen, I need your help with something,” his mother said. In the space of one sentence, she’d shifted completely into the intensity that Zachary knew so well.
Suddenly he wished he’d never called.
“There’s movement with your sister’s case. I’ve been contacted by someone who worked as a waitress in a diner sixty miles east of here. She guarantees that your sister came in three days in a row and was meeting someone. So I need you to go to the diner and ask for Sharon Barklee. Barklee—with two Es. And then put up flyers all around Riverton. You can design them, right, honey? Like you did before? You’re so much better at it than me.”
“Mom, Mom. I can’t go to Riverton. I work. I have a job. I’m going to Denver.”
“You can go after work. It’s a 24-hour diner.”
A familiar tornado of exhaustion and frustration swept Zachary up. This was the fifth or sixth person in the last ten years who had claimed to see Sarah. And of course they did, because his mother kept advertising a reward for a sighting of her.
The first time it had happened had only been a year after they moved to Garnet Run, and even Zachary had gotten his hopes up, despite thinking he’d resigned himself to Sarah’s permanent absence.
