Sophie looked up.

“Everybody thinks we’re the ones he took,” Ethan said. “He didn’t take us. He took us *away.* From you, from Mom, from school, from having names. I’ve been in this family five years and everybody talks about you like you’re the one who got left and me and Noah like we’re the ones who got saved.”

He rubbed his thumb across the scar in his eyebrow, which he does.

“He decided for all four of us in one afternoon in a garage,” Ethan said. “You’re just the only one who has the recording.”

Chapter 13 — Forty Unknown Numbers

Laura Bennett retired in the spring. She called me in April, four days after her party, and I could tell before she said anything that this was not a social call.

“Caleb Ward has cancer,” she said. “Pancreatic. He’s got weeks, Claire, maybe less. He asked to talk to me and I drove out there Tuesday.”