LITMIR.BIZ

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coming here. That was the last thing she told me.”

      “So you don’t know if she actually came here that day?”

      “No,” April replied, grimly.

      A heavy wave of hopelessness suddenly overwhelmed her. Her patience with the cops’ questions was beginning to wear thin, revealing the truer emotion underneath it. It was the feeling she had been trying, for weeks now, to avoid: raw despair. That was the exact moment she heard a voice from inside the small crowd of onlookers.

      “I saw her,” the voice said.

      It was a man’s voice. April and the police officers, and a few stragglers standing around in front of Metropolitan Bakery, suddenly turned around to see who’d spoken. Before April spotted the man, she saw the faces of the people who had seen him: the looks were of startled surprise, curiosity, even amusement. And then she saw what they saw. A young Amish man, with wide shoulders and long limbs, stepped confidently forward. April had seen him before, around the market, but never up close.

      “Yes,” he said, pointing to the photo that one of the officers was holding in his hand. “Her,” he continued. “I remember seeing her. I saw her last week.”

      For a moment, nobody, not even the police, said a word, as though waiting to hear what else the man might have to say. But, for the moment, he said nothing more.

      The cops eyed him warily, skeptically.

      “You sure?” one of the officers said.

      “Yes,” the Amish man replied. “I am certain.”

      And he really did seem certain. As he answered the officers’ questions, April watched him closely. When they asked his name, he turned to April, as though addressing her, looked deeply at her, and said, “Joseph. Joseph Young.” He pronounced his own name as though he were delivering a piece of dramatic news. To April, that’s exactly how it felt.

      His demeanor was unlike anything she’d ever seen in a man. Especially in one her own age. He seemed entirely in control, but without the need to assert his control over the situation. He held immense power in his large body but didn’t bother wielding it, didn’t seem to feel the need to show off. He seemed even more powerful for his restraint, more charismatic for his ability to master his charisma. To the police, he delivered strong, clear answers that were direct and sincere. He answered with a crisp “yes,” never “yeah” or “yup.” He wasn’t trying to conceal something or compensate for anything. He was, in short, perfectly comfortable in his skin.

      And what a skin it was. This man was head-turningly handsome. His serious face allowed for a quick smile, and April noticed he had dimples.

      April was noticing, too, that she wasn’t the only one seeing this. The eyes of the cops, and everyone who lingered in front of the bakery, were glued to this strange, beautiful man. Nobody wanted to interrupt him or let him go. Unless it was her imagination, it seemed that the cops were now only asking him questions as an excuse to keep him in front of their eyes.

      And then there was his gaze. At various moments, he looked directly at April with intense green eyes—but why was he so interested in her? Maybe it was because she was the sister of the missing girl. Or was it because April herself was staring at him? Could it be because he was as taken with her as she was with him? Whatever the reason, the effect of that gaze on April was immediate, and it registered bodily. It felt as if she was standing in the hot beam of a theater spotlight. It was the same sensation she’d felt when she used to act in school plays. And, just as his eyes warmed her skin like hot stage lights, she felt the need to perform, to make a speech, to undertake some grand gesture—and increasingly the gesture she wanted to make was a dramatic exit. The heat was too much. She needed to do something, anything, not to seem like a deer caught in the headlights.

      But the more April watched him, and the more she detected how intensely controlled he was, the more she also sensed that he was, just maybe, a bit too controlled. He would be hard to reach. A fortress. An impressive fortress, no doubt. But a fortress.

      So mesmerized was April by this man that she hardly noticed that the police had stopped talking to him and had turned back to her, with some additional questions. She tried her best to focus on what she was being asked. But, in doing so, she lost track of the beautiful man. And before she knew it, when she looked around, he was nowhere to be seen.

      * * *

      That was the first time April paid close attention to the mysterious Joseph Young. But it wasn’t the first time he’d studied her. In fact, he’d had his eye on her from the moment she’d made a dramatic entrance at the bakery in Reading Terminal Market almost a week earlier.

      Joseph had witnessed the whole scene that day. From his own corner of Reading Terminal Market, at the Amish-run diner next to the bakery, he’d watched it unfold. That day, a Friday, he could tell that something was very wrong even before he knew what it was. He sensed trouble. And he wasn’t the only one. The bakery’s owner, Carmen, also sensed it.

      Standing at her shop counter, carefully arranging the day’s assorted delicacies—brioches and tartes Tatin, fresh out of the oven—Carmen sensed a commotion outside the bakery, somewhere out in the sprawling mass of Reading Terminal Market, which was packed with crowds shopping for a summer weekend. Carmen and Joseph, both, detected it as a minor disturbance of air, like the early breezes of an impending storm.

      Just as Carmen rose to her tiptoes to peer over the crowd and investigate the situation, April lunged out of the mass of people, elbowing her way forward—seeming, as Carmen would later remember it, as though she weren’t walking but somehow spinning, like a drunk ballerina pirouetting wildly. April sped headlong through the doorway of Carmen’s bakery, tripped over one of the café chairs, and braced her body against the counter. Joseph, who happened to be standing nearby, saw this and followed her into the shop, where he witnessed the whole exchange.

      “I need your phone,” April had said, staring directly at Carmen. “I gotta make a call.”

      April was not blinking.

      Carmen drew a long, loud breath through her nose.

      “Sorry, hon,” she said, straightening her back. “Can’t do that.”

      Carmen wasn’t from Philadelphia. But she’d lived there long enough, almost twenty years now, that she’d seen all of the mischief and misery the city had to offer. Half of the city, it seemed, needed her phone, or something of hers, at some point. Did a day go by when someone on the street didn’t try to hustle her out of something?

      Carmen quickly sized up the young woman standing in front of her. To survive in the city, a pretty girl like this would have to project an aura of danger. High and tight ponytail, hoop earrings, fire engine red lipstick to contrast with straight black hair and green eyes, high-waisted slightly baggy jeans, ripped at the knees and dotted with flecks of paint, red Air Jordans on her feet, a short, purple-black faux leather jacket, and a grimy fraying gray T-shirt. Philly was full of young women like her, Carmen thought. They’re tough, sure, but mostly they want you to think they’re tough. In other words: they’re hiding something. Carmen tried to remain unmoved.

      What gave her pause was the look on the young woman’s face, the same look that had brought Joseph into the shop behind her: it was a look of genuine distress.

      A memory flashed in Carmen’s mind. Childhood. The farm. That girl.

      Carmen came from country folk, who only went to hospitals if they needed surgery. Otherwise they used their own home remedies. Once, when she was really young, maybe eight or nine, she’d seen the most awful thing. Without any warning or previous sign of illness, a teenaged neighbor girl dropped dead one day while doing her chores in the dairy. Within days, the family buried the poor girl in the family plot. There was only one problem: she wasn’t dead.

      She’d fallen prey to a rare form of catatonia, which closely mimicked signs of death. When they’d checked for a heartbeat, they didn’t hear it because the beats were so faint and so infrequent that her heart truly might not have been beating during the

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