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was think about the missed opportunities that had kept them divided. She had long since accepted that Rachel would never know how deeply Emily loved her, in spite of the venom the girl had directed at her for so many years. Even when she tried to stop loving her, she couldn’t.
    Gone.
    What if she hadn’t run away? What if she ended up like that other girl, snatched off the street?
    “Where are you, baby?” she said.
    Emily heard noises in the front hall as the door opened and Graeme returned. She didn’t want to see him. She couldn’t balance all of it, her estrangement from Graeme, her grief over Rachel. Emily got up quickly and fled through the kitchen to the back stairs. She listened as Graeme returned to the porch. She imagined him glancing at the empty room, realizing she was gone. Emily didn’t expect him to follow her, and he didn’t. She could barely make out the tapping of keys as he sat down at his desk and worked on his computer. She hurried up the stairs to the second floor.
    She wouldn’t sleep in their bedroom tonight. He wouldn’t miss that, either.
    Emily went to Rachel’s room. She smelled strangers there, the sweaty aroma of the police who had pawed through Rachel’s desk and dresser that night. In truth, the room itself was a stranger to her, because she had hardly stepped foot inside while Rachel was home. It was her daughter’s private fortress, and Emily of all people wasn’t allowed.
    The room was largely barren. There were no posters up on the walls, only a pale coating of yellow paint. Her dirty clothes were piled in the corner, in and out of a white basket. She had a stack of schoolbooks, some open, some closed, spread randomly across the desk, with wrinkled notepapers, half-filled with Rachel’s scrawl, sticking out of the pages. Only her bed was carefully made—the one part of the room Rachel allowed the maid to touch.
    Emily lay down on the bed, pulled her legs up, and curled her arms around them. She saw the photo, placed lovingly on her daughter’s nightstand, of Rachel bundled up in her father’s arms. Emily reached out with one hand and tipped the frame over, so she didn’t have to stare at it.
    As she looked at the nightstand, however, she realized she couldn’t escape the past so easily. Next to the clock radio, perched on its hind legs, was a stuffed pink pig, adorned with black plastic sunglasses. A souvenir from the Minnesota State Fair.
    Nine years later, and Rachel still kept it by her bed.
    “Tommy,” Emily sighed.
     
     
    Tommy hoisted Rachel onto his shoulders. Now taller than everyone around her, Rachel opened her mouth in wonder at the sight of all the people, crammed together shoulder to shoulder, from one side of the street to the other. There were tens of thousands of them, a sweaty, squirming mass, baking in the heat and humidity of a late August evening
.
    “
It’s amazing, Daddy!” Rachel cried
.
    “
Didn’t I promise you?” Tommy said. “Isn’t this great?” He lifted Rachel high in the air, swirled her around, and swooped her to the ground
.
    “
Can we do the midway now?” Rachel sang out
.
    Emily had to laugh. She suspected that was the last thing Tommy wanted. All day long, she had watched Tommy and Rachel bury themselves in the fair. Tommy ate everything, swallowing deep-fried cheese curds like popcorn and washing them down with giant plastic cups of ice-cold beer. He ate corn dogs, pork chops, onion blossoms, roasted corn slathered in butter, fried ravioli, and bag after bag of minidoughnuts. And now the rides would churn his stomach like a blender. But Tommy never said no to Rachel
.
    By the time they reached the midway, it was a tornado of light. Darkness had turned the carnival into a fairyland, where a sea of people screamed and their faces reflected a rainbow of colors from the rides streaking overhead. Rachel wanted to do everything. It didn’t matter how fast the ride went, or how high, or how many times she spun upside down