Free The Missing by Sarah Langan

a month of their first visit to room 69. He never confronted her, or even explained how he found out. One night, instead of turning on the tube and watching the evening news, he sat at the kitchen table after she cleared it. Immediately she’d known that something was wrong. “I think you have a new friend,” he’d said.
    “Yes,” she’d said. “I’m sorry.” She’d waited for him to shout, to hit a counter, to cry, to announce that one of them had to move out. She’d been looking forward to it. But he didn’t say anything. He just nodded, like he’d weather this storm of her temporary insanity, because even if she didn’t know it herself, he trusted that she’d return to her senses.
    What galled her most was that he was right. She called Graham that very night. Fenstad was listening at the table when she told him, “I can’t see you anymore. My husband knows.”
    “Tough break, babe,” Graham had said, which pretty much summed up Graham Nero. And Fenstad, sitting at that table, kept reading the paper, which pretty much summed up Fenstad Wintrob.
    When Meg finished reading Sky All Around , she di- rected parents and children alike to the stack of books she’d selected on the subjects of Iowa and clouds. “Thank you, Meg. You’re so good at story hour,” Cait- lin said with a blushing smile when it was over, and Meg nodded: “Anytime.”
    Meg pitied Caitlin. Graham wasn’t inherently bad, but he was selfish. He’d ride her until her health gave out and her looks were gone. Caitlin was such a chump, she’d let it happen. Then Meg felt guilty, because she could quibble with the man’s bedside manner, but at least Fenstad was a decent person.
    Just then, someone started shouting in the reference
    department: “Hey. Hey-o! Heyoooh!!! ” The voice, un- mistakably, was Albert’s. She frowned. He was never this loud.
    “I’ll be right back,” Meg announced. She found Al- bert slapping his hands against either side of the used iMac he’d been working on, while the Plexiglas parti- tion quivered. “ Heyoooh! ” he shouted, which meant, what, hello? Beads of spit hung in gooey strands be- tween his mouth and the keyboard. Not surprisingly, but nevertheless infuriatingly, the three old ladies that made up the volunteer staff were hiding behind the re- ception desk. From a distance, Meg could see the top inch of Molly Popek’s white bird’s nest of hair.
    “Albert?” she asked.
    “ Heyoooh — Stoopit! ” he said. He was slamming so hard against the machine that for once his tremors weren’t noticeable. She translated his babble: Hey, you! Stop it.
    “Shut up!” Sheila Haggerty, the local bag lady, shrilled. On the table in front of her was the steel chain- link lock that she brought with her to the library every day, but never remembered to use to attach her grocery cart to the library’s bike rack. “I hate a whiny whiner! My husband could shoot you!” she hollered.
    “He’s digging,” Albert cried. “Oh, God. He’s digging up my pretty bones.” Drool flung in wild reams across his cheeks: “ Heyooostooopit! ” he shouted again as he slammed his hands against the monitor. Then she heard a loud click. He kept pounding, and as he did, his left wrist flexed parallel to his hand in a way that could only mean it was broken. What scared her most was that the break didn’t slow him down.
    “Molly!” she shouted, “Call the police.” Molly was standing now. She looked at Meg for a second or two, and then turned her attention back to Albert without
    picking up the phone. Time was short, but Meg had just enough of it to mentally curse the friggin’ coffee- sucking volunteers. Then she summoned the courage to come closer. On Albert’s computer screen was a photo of an Andersonville burial. In it, Union soldiers were stacked ten men deep in an open grave. Their gaunt, naked bodies were pressed together like fitted puzzle pieces, inhuman and mundane.
    “Albert!” she shouted. His back