Page 68 of The Man Made of Smoke

What had happened? Whatwashappening?

I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to do.

When the food was ready, we sat at the kitchen table together, but the emotions had tightened a knot in my throat, and I found it harder and harder to swallow with every mouthful. Something was building. I was bracing myself—determined to keep myself under control—but when everything did finally burst out, it arrived not as tears but as a question.

“Do you ever think about that day?” I said quickly.

There was a moment of silence.

Sarah continued to chew her food slowly, but I noticed the subtle change to her body language. A stiffening of the shoulders; a tension in the way she held her knife and fork. There was no need to specify what day I was asking about. Of all the times as kids that she and I had spent together, the afternoon at the rest area cast the longest shadow.

She swallowed carefully.

“Sometimes,” she said.

“When?”

“When I’m feeling bad, I suppose.” She shrugged. “When you’re down about yourself, you think about things to make yourself feel even worse, don’t you? It’s weirdly comfortable to dwell. Maybe it means you’re right aboutsomethingat least. Even if it’s just the fact that you’re a shit person.”

“You’re not a shit person.”

“Thank you.” She pointed her fork at me. “But also. Do you findtelling someone thatgenerally makes the slightest bit of difference?”

“No.”

She gestured with the fork again—point proved—then looked down and absently poked at her food instead.

“Honestly,” she said, “I don’t think I evensawRobbie Garforth that day. I can picture his face, but maybe that’s because I saw the photograph afterward and then my mindeditedhim into my memories.”

“That’s how I feel too,” I said.

She shook her head. “But you did see him.”

I hesitated.

“I sawsomeone,” I said. “But I didn’t think it was Robbie Garforth at first. It took me a long time to accept that it was. My father wanted me to. The police did too—they wanted it to be him. And I think that, in the end, one of the only reasons I agreed was because I just couldn’t bear it anymore. It was too much. I needed it all to end.”

“Nobodywantedit to be him,” Sarah said. “Robbie was abducted, what, a week or so beforehand? There were no other missing children.”

“There are always missing children.”

“Not like that.”

“But what if it wasn’t him?” I said. “What if it was another child?”

She stared at me for a few seconds. Then she sighed and put down her knife and fork.

“Why are we talking about this, Dan?”

I didn’t reply.

“Because it’s not healthy,” she said. “I do know that much. Whateverhappened that day, none of it wasourfault. Not mine, not yours. We were just kids too, for fuck’s sake.”

“I know that.”

“So what could we have done?”

“Nothing.”

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