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By Root 442 0

Blaming herself for me disappearing. Thinking the worst. Probably just like Cassidy, now that I think of it. Auntie Kaleigh got worried that Mom might become so depressed that she might try to do something to herself, so she convinced me to send a letter to the doctor’s office where she worked. No return address. No phone number. Just a typed-up note without even my signature. Uncle Owen drove all night and mailed it from Daytona just in case there was a way to trace the postage mark. I told Mom that I was safe and happy and never planned on coming home. I told her not to worry and that it wasn’t her fault. I told her that I was with people who were taking care of me and who cared. Then I told her to burn the letter and never to tell Dad about it. I don’t know if she listened, but probably not. Some guy came to Chisholm a couple months after I sent it, knocking on my aunt and uncle’s door and asking questions. He said he was a private investigator working for my mom and dad. Then another guy showed up about two years after that, and then another a few years later. They knocked on even more doors, asking the same kinds of questions. Kelly thought that you might be another one of those guys, but when I heard that you mentioned Cassidy, I knew you were for real.”

“So you didn’t live with your aunt and uncle when you got here?”

“God, no. I knew I couldn’t live with them, because I’d eventually be found, but I thought that they might find a place to hide me, and they did. They had friends who lived about twenty miles south of here who owned a farm. Uncle Paul and Aunt Kim. They weren’t really related to me, but that’s what I called them. They grew sweet potatoes and cucumbers and Christmas trees. They had four kids already, and they took me in and raised me like their own. What’s one more, right?”

“And what? They adopted you?” Milo asked. “How did that work?”

“Like I told you before, there are ways of getting a new name. New social security number. New birth certificate. New everything. I don’t know how it was done exactly, and it’s probably very different today, but that’s how I became Emma Keck. Niece of Paul and Kim Keck. I know it cost my aunt and uncle, my real aunt and uncle, I mean, Kaleigh and Owen, a lot of money. Probably most of their savings. Not to mention Uncle Paul and Auntie Kim. Taking in somebody else’s kid couldn’t have been easy or cheap. We had to invent a brand-new life for me. I had to learn lots of new stuff, fake stuff about a dead mother in Minnesota and a deadbeat dad and a year of foster care. My brothers and sisters—that’s how I came to think of Paul and Kim’s kids—they had to learn it too. Just in case someone asked them about me. Kelly knew the story too. She’s Auntie Kaleigh and Uncle Owen’s daughter. She’s a couple years younger than I am, but she was home the night that I showed up on their doorstep, so they had to tell her too. They all knew my story and helped me stay hidden. After college, I tried to pay Uncle Paul and Auntie Kim back, but they would never take a dime. So about four years ago, after I sold my second book, I bought them a new tractor and had it delivered on their front lawn one Sunday morning. I figured the one thing you can’t return is a tractor, no matter how much you might want to. You can’t imagine their faces, finding this huge John Deere sitting on their front grass at sunrise. It was great.”

“And you never went back to Blackstone? Never went back north at all?”

“Nope. My therapist has tried to get me to go for years, but I just couldn’t. Even when I got news that my mom had died, I couldn’t bring myself to go. There was nothing there for me. No reason to deal with all that bullshit ever again. Until now.” Emma stuffed the rest of the sandwich, an amount larger than her first bite, into her mouth and began a full minute of laborious chewing. Finally, she had cleared enough room to apologize. “Sorry. I’ve always been a lousy eater. In my house, you had to eat fast or you didn’t get seconds. Five kids on a farmer’s income.”

Milo excused himself from the table to