The phone buzzed again.
She pressed answer.
"Brock?" The voice was breathless and older and frightened. "Brock, thank God. She's gone. She walked out of Cedar Hollow around six, they just called me, she signed herself out and she's not answering anything. I've got Tanner here and he keeps asking when he can talk to his mom, and I don't know what to tell him. I don't know where she'd go. You said you'd know where she'd go."
Kristen opened her mouth and nothing came out.
"Brock? Are you there?"
"This is Kristen," she said. "This is Shelby's sister."
There was a silence on the line so complete that she thought the call had dropped. Then she heard the woman breathe, slow, the breath of someone setting down something heavy and finding it had been heavier than she'd known.
"Oh, honey," said Jolene Marsh. "Oh, honey. I told them. I told them both you should know."
Kristen stood up. Her knees cracked. She did not look at her husband.
"Know what," she said into the phone. "What is Cedar Hollow?"
"It's a treatment center," Jolene said. "Residential. Out past Hollis, off Route 9. She's been there twenty-three days. Twenty-three days, and she was doing so well, she was doing the family calls every Sunday with Tanner, she made him a bracelet out of embroidery thread, and they just called and said she signed the form and walked out to the road and got in a car. They don't know whose car. They're not allowed to stop her. She's an adult. That's what they kept saying to me. She's an adult."
"Treatment for what?"
Jolene was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke again she was choosing her words, the way you choose footholds. "Pills, honey. Oxy, at first. Then whatever she could get. I found her on her kitchen floor in August. I'm a respiratory therapist, I was, I retired in the spring, and I had the Narcan in my purse because I always do. She was blue around the mouth. Tanner was at a sleepover, thank God. Thank God for that. She came back and she grabbed my wrist and she said, Don't call my sister. Please don't call Kris. Call Brock. And she gave me his number off her phone."
Kristen sat down on the bench. The duffel bag tipped and the grey towel unrolled onto the tile.