Local Woman Missing

by Mary Kubica

That’s not to say I didn’t think about you. I thought about you a lot when you were gone, though all I ever knew was the absence of you.

But for as much as people think the internet knows everything, the one thing

it doesn’t say is that the girl who came back isn’t the same one who disappeared.

Because the realization that harm can come to one of my kids when I’m not there to protect them still terrifies me.