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"You’re driving?" Parker’s voice inches higher, disbelieving "You need to pull over Do me a favor and pull over, okay?"

"I need to find her, Parker" My voice cracks My phone beeps at me even more insistently "I need to help her"

"Where are you exactly?" he repeats, and his room unfolds in front of me: the old baseball laht on the navy-blue carpet; the rumpled sheets that always smell faintly like pine; the swivel desk chair and the clutter of books and video ga into a shirt one-handed, ru toward Orphan’s Beach," I say, because it’s the only thing I can think to do Andre irls to be photographed The answer lies along the beach, close to Beaht have a secondary basement; or e shed closer to the water I need proof

I have an ever-growing sense that this was all planned, at least initially, by Dara She intendedme clues so that I would be able to help her

It was a cry for help

"Orphan’s Beach?" On Parker’s end, a door opens and closes with a fir by feel, keeping one hand on the wall (papered with faded patterns of ribbons and dried flowers, a design he despises) "Where ent last year on Dara’s birthday? Where we found the lighthouse?"

"Yeah," I say "There’s a bar just down the road called" The words turn to dust in h n, cocktail napkins ihts, to beaht--and just like that I know exactly where Andre takes his girls, where he has his parties, where he photographed Dara and Sarah Snohere so terrible happened to Madeline

"A bar called what?" Parker’s voice sounds distant now, thinner He’s outside He’s hurrying across the grass, holding his cell phone to his shoulder with his chin, rifling through his jeans for his keys "Nick, are you there?"

"Oh htly,down co out loud makes me feel better "Shit, shit, shit" Then I re one hand on the wheel, I feel around for it in the cup holder, but coether and stuck to the back of a quarter I reach over to run a hand along the passenger seat, increasingly desperate Nothing

Just then an animal--a raccoon or a possum, it’s too dark to tell--shoots out fro, directly in the path of my wheels I jerk the wheel hard into the next lane without checking for cars, expecting to feel a hard thu before I can plunge past the guardrail and straight past the darkened beachfront houses and into the water When I look in the rearview mirror, I see a dark shape bolt across the road Safe, then

Still, I can’t shake loose that spike of panic, the terror of being out of control, of heading over the brink I must have left Dara’s phone at hoh her room That means I really am alone The answers are all there, down on that lonely stretch of beach between Beamer’s and the accident site, where the currents make it deadly to swim: the answers to what happened to Madeline Snow, and what happened to change ht four e of the earth and into the darkness

And a soing

Dara

2:02 ahthouse looks abandoned It rises above the construction scaffolding like a finger pointing to the moon The narros are boarded up ood bleached a dull gray, and signs declare the whole place off-limits WARNING, one of them reads, HARD HAT AREA ONLY But there has been no construction here, not for a long tin is streaked with salt and warped fro

I should have brought a flashlight

I don’t reet in--only that there is a way in, a secret door, like a passage to another world

I circle the beach, slipping a little on the rocks In the distance, beyond the boulders, I can see Bea insect, and every so often I hear a car go by on the highway, see a section of beach and stone get lit up by a fast sweep of headlights, though I’rass and pigface that grow up near the divider

The tide is up Black mud bubbles up between the stones, and waves foa pools between the rocks whenever they recede It’s a lonely place, a place no one would think to investigate--and yet, less than a thousand feet down the road the lights and chaos of East Norwalk begin

I duck underneath the construction scaffolding, running a hand along the curve of the lighthouse, paint splintering under ers The only door is boarded up, like all the s Still, I keep circling I’ve been here before There must be a way in Unless