And at first this reassured them – how could anything terrible happen to four kids at once? Then an open Jeep drove into the clearing with two little boys in the back, the white-blond brothers from Wisconsin. Someone from a nearby cottage had picked them up on the highway. Their mother, a pretty woman with platinum hair cut as short as theirs, ran across the clearing and fell on them, hugging them, cuffing at them (“You brats, you stupid little jerk-offs,” she cried), and their father, who had spent the afternoon drinking cider and sleeping in a hammock tied between two trees, strode around the Jeep to shake the driver’s hand. So then it was just Sylvie missing, and the dark-haired boy with the sick mother, Liam. From where she crouched at a corner of the woodpile, Sylvie could hear most of what they said. She was thirsty, and lightheaded from hunger, and her feet were cold and hurting. She’d run barefoot up from the lake, avoiding the paths where the adults hurried back and forth, calling the kids’ names.
