Free The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond Page B

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    Emma, Jake, and I came here together once, on a Saturday, for a fly-fishing lesson. It’s part of what makes Jake such a good father—his insistence that Emma constantly experience new things. That day the three huge cement pools were glassy, lit by sun streaming through the conifers. Tonight they are shrouded in mist. I remember how Emma held my hand tightly that day, standing several feet from the pools, and asked, “Is it deep?”
    My voice sounds strange in the quiet of this place. I don’t tell Annabel about the large trapdoor at the west end of the pond, how I tried the heavy cover and was surprised to find it unlocked, how I lifted it, aimed my flashlight into the darkness, and cautiously made my way down the damp steps. I don’t tell her that as I lay awake last night, I thought of the ponds, and the trapdoor, and I imagined Emma crouched down below, shivering in the dark, captive to some maniac.
    I called her name as I made my way down the steps. My own voice echoed back. I reached bottom, found nothing.
    Now I hold in my hand a tiny wooden fly, painted an iridescent purple, with white feathers and strangely luminescent fur. Feeling its faint weight in my palm, I peer into the darkness of the ponds. Would it be possible to conceal a body there?
    “I want you to walk back to your car right this minute,” Annabel says. “I’m not letting you off the phone until I know you’re safe.”
    I walk past the stone lodge, through the paths of lavender and rosemary. In the distance, the copper dome of the new de Young Museum rises above the tree line, glittering strangely in the moonlight. I get in my car and pull the door shut.
    “Is it locked?” Annabel asks.
    “You sound like Mom.”
    She sighs. “God, you scare me sometimes.”
    I start the car and head toward home. I used to love driving through the park at night. In the dark, it seemed less like an urban oasis than some jungle at the edge of the world. Now, it just looks dangerous, like some hideout for misfits and murderers.
    “Hey,” Annabel says, “I’ve been wondering. Do you remember Sarah Callahan?”
    “Of course. I’d completely forgotten. Then, when all of this happened, she immediately came to mind.”
    “I think about her all the time,” Annabel says. “Did I ever mention she used to let me cheat off her paper during math tests? She only did it because she wanted so desperately to be friends. Just a couple of weeks before she disappeared, she invited me to go to a movie to celebrate her birthday. I made up some excuse to get out of it.”
    Although I had rarely spoken to Sarah, I remembered her face. We went to a small private girls’ school where everyone knew everyone else. Cliques were clearly defined, and one stuck to one’s own group religiously. What set Sarah apart was that she had no group. As far as I know, she had no one.
    “She used to bring this red Tupperware lunch box to school,” Annabel says. “It had smaller pieces of Tupperware inside it. Every day she’d spread the little boxes out on the ground—her sandwich, her chips, her cookies—and take a bite from each item, one after the other, until everything was gone. She wouldn’t have anything to drink until she’d eaten every last crumb.”
    One Tuesday toward the beginning of the spring semester, the headmaster came into our classroom and asked if anyone had seen or talked to Sarah on the previous day. No one answered. “Think,” the headmaster said. Still, no answer. “Okay,” he said somberly. “Carry on.”
    That afternoon, he went to every classroom and asked the same question, receiving the same blank response. By the end of the day, news had circulated that Mr. and Mrs. Callahan had last seen Sarah early Monday morning, when they both left for work. On Monday night, the Callahans came home late from a dinner party, and Sarah wasn’t there.
    The bus driver reported that Sarah hadn’t been at the bus stop on Monday morning. On Tuesday