And I smiled, and Matthias said, “Sure. We’re not going anywhere, right, Maryanne?”

“Nope, goin’ nowhere,” I replied, because I didn’t want to move a muscle, didn’t even want to waste as much energy as it took to think about moving.

And they went—Michael and Nancy—hand in hand, ever so slowly, out toward the edge of the field.

“You ever been in love, Maryanne?” Matthias asked me.

I didn’t want to talk, not even about love, but I said, “Maybe. I don’t know. I am wondering if you really know whether you’re actually in love the first time . . . because it’d be the first time, right, and you’d have never done it before.”

“I guess so,” he said, and then he sighed. He closed his eyes and he didn’t say another word.

We were there just a little while, it seemed, though time was playing its own game, so maybe it was half an hour, an hour perhaps, and then Michael came back alone.

Michael Webster took Nancy Denton out into the trees at the end of Five Mile Road, and then he came back alone.

He seemed confused, disorientated. He said he didn’t know what happened. He said they were together and then they were not. She was there, there right beside him, and then she was gone. Just gone. Where did she go? That was the question that was never answered. Where did Nancy go?

Now I know I should have gone with her. Maybe I would have disappeared as well, but at least I would have known. At least I wouldn’t have had that question hanging over me for the rest of my life.

The present becomes the past, unstoppable and inevitable, and then we look back and hindsight shows us our cruelest lessons.

I should have gone with her.

I should have kept them from going.

I should have said something.

If I had, she would still be here, still be alive, and we would still be the very best of friends.

I know this. I know it with everything I possess, because that was how we were. We had always been, and always would be, the very best of friends.

My sister from another mother. That’s what she used to say. You are my sister from another mother.

Because things have not been the same since, not for any of us.

We used to be inseparable. If you saw one, you saw all. Maybe Nancy was the glue that held us all together, and when she vanished there was just nothing to make us stick anymore.

They say that Michael went crazy. I can imagine he did. I can imagine that losing Nancy was like having his heart torn right out of his chest. Life would have had no meaning anymore.

Maybe he believed he was paying the price for surviving the war, that now some kind of universal balance had been restored. Maybe he believed that some kind of debt was owed for his own life. How would that have made me feel? It would’ve made me feel like I was directly responsible for what had happened. It would’ve made me feel like Nancy’s disappearance was my fault, even though I’d had nothing to do with it. Even though I wasn’t there, I would still have felt guilty.

That’s what it would have done to me.

I had been right about remembering that day, that evening.

We went out into the field along Five Mile Road, and—like so many times before—we played old records on a gramophone, the wind-up Victrola that Matthias had fetched from the house, and Nancy danced with Michael on the grass, and he had on his shoes, and she—as always—was without them, and for a while she stood on his shoes, and then she did not, and he danced so well that he never stepped on her toes. Didn’t even come close. They were like that. Symbiotic. That’s the word. I didn’t know it then, but I have learned it since. It described who they were and how they seemed together. Matthias was jealous because he also loved Nancy. And when he asked me that question—You ever been in love, Maryanne?—I knew that he was talking about what he felt for Nancy. And whether that really was love didn’t matter, because Matthias believed it was, as all of us do, and that was all that mattered.

Matthias did not carry his heart on his sleeve. He carried it in his hands, and it was right out there in front of him for the whole world to see. But Nancy was with Michael, and that was the way it would always and forever be.

So we played the records—Peggy Lee and Buddy Clark and Nat King Cole, and we laughed, and Matthias acted the clown because that’s the way he hid the fact that his heart had been broken. Me and Matthias and Michael and Nancy. The Famous Four. The Fabulous Four. The Unforgettable Four.

It was the 12th of August, 1954, a day and date that would be forever burned in our minds.

Perhaps it was true that Michael could never survive without her. I think of the times I’ve seen him since, and each time I haven’t wanted to see him. And Matthias? Matthias just frightens me. I don’t know how to describe it. He just frightens me. Frightens me like his father used to frighten me when I was a little girl. Maybe Matthias, too, believes himself responsible. Maybe he, too, believes that had he loved her more, had he told her how he felt right from the start, then she would have been with him, and this thing would never have happened. For all that Michael was—the war hero, the decorated soldier, the luckiest man alive—he could not protect her against whatever shadow swallowed her. And swallow her it did, like Jonah into the whale.

Every day I opened the door of my house, and every day I expected to see her standing there—smiling, laughing, just as I always remembered her—and saying how there had been a misunderstanding, a prank perhaps, but she was back now, and it was all fine, and there didn’t need to be any questions because it was just one of those things that happened. Life was like that, you know? Odd and funny and surprising. But it was all back to how it once was, and we were all going to be together again, and things were going to be just how they were before that night.

But she was never there. Not through any door.

After a while I stopped expecting her.

After a while I stopped looking.

After a while I stopped remembering her smile, her laugh, the way her eyes shone when Michael danced with her.

That night, I think we ceased to be children. Perhaps, more accurately, we lost that small fragment within us of the children we once were, the children we still remembered. Some people hold on to that fragment all of their lives. They grow old disgracefully, and they never forget to laugh at themselves. We were children together, at least the three of us. Then Michael came, and it was as if everything that had gone before then made sense. We were an odd number, and then we were even, and it all made so much sense. So perhaps Michael was the one who held us together. And then when Nancy disappeared, Michael lost his mind, and when he lost his mind, we lost whatever magic had existed for all that time.

And now here I am. Here we all are. We exist. We survive. We deal with each new day just as we did the day before.

We do not speak to one another. We do not see one another. We do not care to speak of that night in August of 1954.

What could any of us say?

Have you seen Nancy?

Have you heard word of Nancy?

The answer will always be no.

No, I have not seen her.

No, I have heard no word.

You can see it in our eyes. You can read it in the language of our bodies. It is the ghost we all share, the ghost that haunts us. And now—in some strange way—we have one thing in common that we never possessed before, and yet that is the very thing that keeps us apart.

The mystery did not hold us together against adversity and fear. It drove us away from one another in a way that could never be repaired.

We danced in the field, we laughed as we always had, and then Nancy walked into the trees at the end of Five Mile Road and was never seen again.