Free The Forgotten Girl by David Bell

most personal stuff. I know a lot of things about her I don’t want to know.”
    Jason remembered his sister’s frankness, especially the disclosures from their family therapy sessions. “I hear you,” he said.
    “So why was Mom bent out of shape about me mentioning this guy?” Sierra asked. “Was she in love with him?”
    “She wasn’t in love with him,” Jason said. “She was dating your dad in high school.”
    “Was she dating Dad all the time? Were they exclusive?”
    “Your mom wasn’t—” But Jason stopped himself before he said,
Your mom wasn’t exclusive with anybody, even your dad.
He said, “Your mom knew a lot of people in high school. She was popular.”
    “I can guess what that means.”
    When Logan came to their house—the very house they sat before—he and Hayden engaged in a fair amount of flirty banter. Hayden acquired the habit of answering the door wearing just a towel or a pair of skimpy shorts, and she greeted Logan by saying his name with a kittenish purr. But Logan wasn’t the only one of his friends Hayden acted that way around. It was just that Logan was Jason’s best friend, and he spent the most time at their house. Did anything happen between them? Anything more than hormonal teenage verbal jousting? Jason would have known, wouldn’t he? Somebody—either Logan or Hayden—would have told him. And Hayden did spend the majority of her time with Derrick, Sierra’s father.
    “Are you just curious about the story?” Jason asked. “Or do you think it has something to do with why your mom is here?”
    “Mom came back here out of the blue, and she bawled me out when I asked her about the guy. Doesn’t that seem odd?”
    “Did your mom use the word ‘disappear’?” Jason asked.
    “I was trying to remember. The first time I heard the story . . . I guess I can’t remember what words she used. Maybe I just inferred that she meant disappeared. When I asked her this last time, six months ago or whatever, I know
I
said ‘disappeared,’ and she didn’t correct me.”
    “But she didn’t say anything else about it, right?”
    “No, she didn’t. She told me to get lost. So, come on, who was this guy?”
    A blur of images of Logan scrolled through Jason’s mind. Swinging a golf club or a tennis racket. Throwing back a beer or a shot. He thought of his conversation with Regan and her claim that Jason “hero-worshipped” Logan and didn’t see the real him. Was it possible to remember a complete picture of someone, to see a person with his flaws and his strengths? Did he think of Hayden as anything but the lost and wild child? Did he only see the other side of her—intelligent, loving, perceptive—when he was forced to? Was it the same with Logan? Jason knew that the people who left when they were young remained forever frozen in place, never touched by the ravages of time. Aging. Graying. Gaining weight. Losing options.
    “He was my best friend,” Jason said. “We were best friends since the sixth grade. Our families were very different. His was pretty well-off, but I guess we met each other before anyone really thought about all of that. I don’t know—we were kids. We played sports together. We rode our bikes. In high school, we partied together. The usual stuff.”
    “And that’s it?” Sierra said.
    “Pretty much.”
    But Jason remembered the first time Logan took him to the Shaws’ country club. He remembered the huge chandelier, the waiters in their sharply pressed white shirts, the way everyone called him “sir” as though he were already an adult, even though he must have been about twelve. Jason worried over which fork to use and whether to rest his elbows on the table. His hands almost shook as he reached for water or bread. It felt to Jason then—and it still felt that way to some extent—as though Loganopened the door to another world for Jason, one he would never have seen without their friendship.
    “What about when he disappeared? Or left.