Whatever the town believed, whatever I had let myself believe, one look told me the truth: someone had done this to her.

The ground seemed to drop out from under me.

I scooped her up into my arms, and I ran the whole way home without stopping to breathe, her cold weight against my chest, one thought hammering in my skull the entire way — she didn’t leave me, she didn’t leave me, someone took her — and underneath it, already, a rising shame at how easily I had believed she had.

Chapter 3 — Someone Did This to Her