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"Does he have a cell phone?" Helen asked

Gansey shook his head and said, in a sht" He didn’t want to have to explain further

Helen nodded He didn’t say anything else

She helped hie, the attic crawlspace, the rooftop patio on the east wing

There was no place for hihborhood; the closest coffee shop or retail area or congregation of woa pants was three inia streets They were two hours from Henrietta by car

He had to be here, but he wasn’t

The entire day felt i, Ada

"Dick," Helen said, "do you have any ideas?"

"He doesn’t disappear," Gansey replied

"Don’t panic"

"I’"

Helen looked at her brother "Yes, you are"

He called Ronan (Pick up, pick up, for once pick up) and he called 300 Fox Way (Is Blue there? No? Has Adam -- Coca-Cola T-shirt -- called?)

After that, it was no longer only Gansey and Helen It was Gansey and Helen, Mr Gansey and Mrs Gansey, Margo the housekeeper and Delano the neighborhood gateman It was a discreet call placed to Richard Gansey II’s friend at the police depart plans silently shunted aside It was a s the nearby shaded streets and crowded shopping districts

His father drove a ’59 Tatra, a Czech specied to Fidel Castro, while Gansey cradled his phone in the passenger seat Despite the air-conditioning, his palms sweated The true Gansey huddled deep inside his body so that he could keep his face composed

He left He left He left

At seven pan to build over the suburbs and as Richard Gansey II once etown, Gansey’s phone rang -- an unfainia number

He snatched it up "Hello?"

"Gansey?"

And with that, reliefhis joints "Jesus, Ada at hi for a place to pull over

"I couldn’t re so hard to make his voice sound ordinary that it sounded dreadful He either didn’t or couldn’t suppress his Henrietta accent

It’s going to be all right

"Where are you?"

"I don’t know" Then, a little quieter, to someone else, "Where am I?"

The phone was passed to the other person; Gansey heard the sound of cars rushing by in the background A woman’s voice asked, "Hello? Are you a friend of this kid?"

"Yes"

The woman on the other end of the phone explained how she and her husband had stopped by the side of the interstate "It looked like there was a body No one else was stopping Are you close by? Can you coet him? We’re near exit seven on 395 south"

Gansey’s e of Adas They had been nowhere close It hadn’t even occurred to him to look that far away

Richard Gansey II had overheard "That’s south of the Pentagon! That’s got to be fifteen miles from here"

Gansey pointed to the road, but his father was already checking the traffic tosun suddenly ca both of them moht

"We’re coht

"He ht need a doctor"

"Is he hurt?"

The woht Ada to Gansey Not while curled in the backseat of the car Not while sitting at the kitchen table as Margo brought hi by the sofa with the phone clutched to his ear, talking to a doctor, one of the Ganseys’ old faht for so er than anyone else

Finally, he stood in front of Gansey’s parents, chin lifted but eyes faraway, and said, "I’m very sorry for all the trouble"

Later, he fell asleep sitting up on the end of that same sofa Without any particular discussion, the Gansey family in its entirety moved the conversation to the upstairs study, out of earshot Although several engageht to Colorado that evening, no one had mentioned the inconvenience And they never would It was the Gansey way

"What did the doctor call it?" Mrs Gansey asked, sitting in the arh the verdant lampshade beside her, she looked like Helen, which was to say she looked like Gansey, and also to say she looked a little bit like her husband All of the Ganseys sort of looked like one another, like a dog that begins to look like its owner, or vice versa