Did you find anything out about the calls?Ash is about to ask. But before she can say anything, Officer Clark speaks. His tone is gentle, and his words are directed at Caro. “We’ve had a phone call from Lookout Pointe.”
At first, the name means nothing to Ash—is he talking about a hike? Is it somewhere they could have found Hope?—but Caro blanches visibly, and then Ash remembers that that’s the name of Caro’s father’s care facility.
“What happened?” Caro asks, standing.
Officer Clark doesn’t gesture for her to sit down. Behind him, in the mirror, Ash can see his straight back, Caro’s wide-open eyes. “Your father is missing.”
38
PAGE
BEFORE
Hi!
Its Page.
You probubly guessed that.
Does anyone else rite you letters?
I know everyone else probubly texts.
I wish I had a phone.
We went on a feild trip today to a ghost town. They showed us picktures of it before we went. There were old houses and old trees with yellow leaves and nobody alive lives there anymore. Everyone was saying oooh and that maybe it was hunted and I was excited. It looked scary but not too scary. I was hoping we would walk into the ghost houses and the ghosts would come and talk to us likeNight at the Musuem.
None of that happened. We ate our lunches sitting in the cemetery and Brad Wilton thot it would be funny to pee on a grave and Mrs. Chavez got mad at him.
Maybe it was because of Brad peeing or because it wasn’t dark enough or because everyone was being really loud.
But anyway I didn’t see any ghosts.
Did YOU see any when you came on your feild trip here?
Do you think ghosts are real? Do you think they come and hunt you?
Miss you love you,
Page
39
CARO
THESE ARE THE FACTS.
According to the director of Lookout Pointe, with whom Caro has finished speaking, Caro’s father, Henry, went missing this morning after she called to check in on him.
Since Henry usually wakes up around 6 a.m., eats breakfast, goes on a walk with the staff, and then takes a long morning nap, preferring to eat lunch at the later 1:00 p.m. seating, they didn’t realize that he was gone until 12:45 p.m., when a staff member went to pick him up and he wasn’t in his room.
They conducted an extensive search of the premises of Lookout Pointe, surrounding areas, and places that Henry has been known to frequent during his time at Lookout Pointe, such as the Wendy’s where he likes to go for Frostys and locations where the staff have taken the residents on field trips.
They also conducted an extensive search of landmarks from his earlier life, including the home where he raised Caro and the building that once housed his medical practice.
Then they notified the police in St. John, who issued a Silver Alert. They were unable to get in touch with Caro, but the Lookout Pointe stafflater remembered that she had given them a number in addition to her cell phone number. That number was for Sonnet.
The staff are devastated, apologetic, and cooperative. They have never experienced this before. Their memory care unit is secure and state-of-the-art.
