“Hey, they were out of brownies, so I grabbed some ice cream at the convenience store,” Travis called as he shoved the front door closed with his hip. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

His entrance was met with silence, but that wasn’t too surprising. Caitlyn probably had headphones on, watching videos or something. He set the pizza down on the coffee table and went in search of his sister.

“Caitlyn?” he tapped on her door, then knocked when he got no response. He cracked it open slowly, expecting a screech from the other side at any moment, yelling at him to close the door. Nothing came.

Travis’s chest tightened at the empty room. He pulled out his phone and hit the phone icon next to Caitlyn’s picture at the same time that he pulled open her closet. Her usual clothes, the ones at the front that she wore on a regular basis, were all gone, along with her backpack.

The phone went to voicemail and he hung up and dialed again. He opened drawer after drawer of her dresser, noting that underwear and other essentials were missing. Her laptop was gone.

When it went to voicemail again, he called Whitman, leaving it on speaker so he could simultaneously send a text to Caitlyn.

He didn’t even let Whitman have a chance to say hello.

“Have you seen Caitlyn today?”

“Hi and, no. She called and said she needed to stay after school to work on a project. What’s up?”

“Not sure. I gotta go.”

Travis hung up and rushed into his room while he tried Layla and a few of Caitlyn’s old friends, even though he hadn’t seen her hang out with them in a long while. Then he called Aunt Lucinda. No one had seen her.

In his closet, he punched in the code to his safe. His envelope of tip money was still there, but noticeably lighter. She had stolen from him and run away.

He checked his phone again, surprised he was able despite his body almost going numb. No calls. No texts. He even tried email, which he had never seen Caitlyn use except for school. Nothing.

The room was suddenly too hot and too small. Travis wanted to claw out of his skin with the way it strangled him. His limbs had that pins and needles feeling, but his heart beat so hard it might burst from his chest.

“Travis!”

Whitman was there, in his house, in Travis’s room. When had that happened.

“Come sit. Tell me what’s going on.”

Whitman held his elbow and guided him to the sofa. The swirly colored sofa that Caitlyn had presented to him with pride.

“I don’t know where she is.”

Travis didn’t remember Whitman leaving his side, but suddenly he was there with a glass of cold water.

“You tried me. You tried all her friends, I presume?”

Travis nodded, feeling the weird cold trail running down his insides, like suddenly every inch of his body was hyper-focused and overly sensitized, even to something as simple as a drink of water.

“Okay. I’ll go check the library again. Maybe I missed her when I came here. Why don’t you call her caseworker?”

“They’ll never let me keep custody now.” Travis’s hands left watery prints on the glass that transferred to Whitman’s arm when he reached out to stop him. “What if they take her from me?”

“Let’s find her first. Do you want me to check and see if Deputy Andrews is at town hall? Let him know to be on the lookout?”

Travis rubbed his thighs, kneading them until he got feeling back, or maybe he was warming himself. He hadn’t noticed the shivering until Whitman threw a blanket around his shoulders.

“No,” Travis said, standing up and letting the blanket slip to the ground. He immediately shivered again. “I should talk to Gavin. I just need …”

His coat appeared before his eyes and he allowed Whitman to turn him and dress him. He felt slow and stupid, but then, he couldn’t get his brain to work right at the moment. It was stuck on panic, letting very little else through.

“Do you have your keys and your phone?” Whitman’s hand caressed his own in an easy hold that he used to ease Travis forward. Travis couldn’t make his fingers grab the keys right, so Whitman locked the door behind them.

“I’ll head to town hall as soon as I’ve checked the library,” Whitman said, giving Travis a gentle nudge across Porter Road toward the octagonal shingled building that was the town’s pride and joy. Metal sculptures of salmon flanked the large wood doors, and Travis had to use both hands to get inside.

He shuffled across the grey-blue carpet. The front desk was empty. The town council and mayor probably didn’t work late on a Friday afternoon. He walked forward until he was in front of the mural commissioned by the tribe back in the seventies when federal recognition of the tribe was restored after being stripped away in the fifties, and the town and tribe agreed to work together.

Colorful blocks combined and overlapped under a sea of green. To most, it would look like any modern art. To the tribe, it represented belonging, togetherness, even though many at the time didn’t feel like forgiving or welcoming their fellow citizens into their culture after it had been so viciously taken from them.

To Travis, the painting served as a painful reminder of the how big the world outside those walls was, and how he somehow had to find his sister in all of it.

“Hello?” he called, and he swore he heard his own voice echo. “Gavin?”

The footsteps sounded first.

“Travis. Little late for a delivery.”

Gavin wore his khaki uniform and rested his hands at his belt in way that looked natural and comfortable, not intimidating. He smiled like he didn’t get many visitors on a rainy Friday afternoon in October, and the pit in Travis’s stomach deepened.

“What’s going on?” Gavin’s calm gave way to a frown.

“I can’t find Caitlyn. Some of her things are missing – her laptop and some clothes and her backpack.”

“You think she ran away.” Gavin didn’t ask, and he led Travis back to his office.

“I don’t know why.” Travis might have been embarrassed about the pitch of his voice or the fact that he was whining like a thirteen-year-old any other time, but not then. “She’s been getting better. Doing well in school again. Helping out at the library. Hanging out with friends.”

“I’m assuming you’ve called them all?”

Travis nodded, the adrenaline of the moment had fueled him to that point, but now it all came crashing down. His body must have been made of rocks, not bones and muscle. He could barely lift his head.

“Who’s her best friend?”

The words sounded like they were coming from somewhere, but his head had started to feel like it was full of cotton. Cotton and rocks. He was the world’s weirdest scarecrow.

“Layla Reynolds,” said another voice poking through the mush.

The words morphed into a distant buzzing that lulled Travis into unconsciousness.

Whitman peeked into Travis’s bedroom, a crack of light from the hallway focusing on Travis’s still-sleeping form. Mr. Wigglesworth raised his head at the intrusion. He had camped out in the crook of Travis’s knees, his head resting on Travis’s thigh.

His phone and Travis’s sat side-by-side on the coffee table. A discarded cup of chamomile tea that had not calmed Whitman’s nerves called to him, and he picked it up for something to do with his hands.

Caitlyn wasn’t at C3, or school, or the hanging around outside the library. When Whitman met Travis at the town hall, Travis had practically passed out from coming down so quickly and hard from his panic attack. He had been aware enough to help Whitman get him back across the street and tucked into bed, but Whitman doubted he’d remember much.

Deputy Andrews had followed, and Whitman had filled him in on everything that Travis had told him. The deputy had checked Caitlyn’s room and taken down both their numbers as well as the phone numbers for Layla and Aunt Lucinda that Whitman was able to pull from Travis’s phone. When Travis woke up, Whitman planned on discussing a lock screen with him.

Deputy Andrews promised to investigate and left a little while ago. Whitman had been a scout, watching the phones and Travis sleeping with the vigilance of Mad-Eye Moody.

Whitman’s heart went out to both Butler siblings. He didn’t know why Caitlyn had run away, but he knew she had been struggling, even if she was doing better. Getting over something like that wasn’t just a switch. Spend some time at the library, read some books, hang out with friends, and voila, goodbye depression.

But he also ached for Travis, who worked so hard and felt so much. He was sure Caitlyn didn’t mean it that way, but her running away wasn’t so much a slap in the face for everything Travis had done for her as it was a punch in the gut.

Something stirred behind him and Whitman turned to find Travis in sweatpants and nothing else. He had put him to bed in boxers, so Travis must have scrounged for that much before leaving his room.

“Have you heard from her?” He flopped onto the couch and propped his feet on the coffee table, slouching into a side pillow. “Have you heard anything?”

Whitman popped into the kitchen to fix Travis some tea. Maybe it would have more of an effect on him.

“No. Deputy Andrews has kept in constant contact, letting me know what he finds out and checking to make sure we haven’t heard anything either.”

Travis didn’t have a tea kettle so Whitman nuked the water in the microwave and set the steaming mug down near Travis’s feet.

“Why?” Travis asked the ceiling. Mr. Wigglesworth jumped into his lap and sniffed at the tea-scented air before settling across his stomach.

“Deputy Andrews did get something from Layla,” Whitman said, picking up the mug and trying to get Travis to take it. Mr. Wigglesworth huffed at being disturbed yet again, and jumped down from Travis’s lap, favoring his immobile, if not nearly as warm and cushy, dog bed instead.

Travis waved off the tea and directed all his focus onto Whitman. “Well? What?”

“Apparently she found out about Pastor Ricky wanting custody.”

Watching the news unfold across Travis’s face pained Whitman deep in his gut. He clutched Travis’s hand around the mug until he held it on his own.

“Drink. You need it.”

Travis sipped, his eyes unfocused in the direction of the kitchen.

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

The doorbell rang and Travis sprang to his feet, sloshing tea across his sweatpants.

“It’s probably your aunt. I called her,” Whitman said, beating Travis to the front door.

Whitman had wanted to make Travis dinner, but his cabinets were bare and the leftovers in the fridge had started to smell. He figured if Lucinda could watch Travis, he could run home and grab somethings to bring back. Instead, Lucinda insisted on fixing them both dinner, and stood on the front porch with a canvas bag stuffed to the brim and a casserole dish in hand.

“Macaroni and cheese,” she said, sweeping past Whitman and brushing a kiss against Travis’s cheek. “Instagram it, and if that doesn’t tempt her home, I don’t know what will.”

Travis choked and Whitman rushed to relieve Lucinda of her load so she could gather Travis in her arms. She led him to the sofa and held him as he finally released the fear and anger he had been holding inside.

“Directions are in the bag, sweetie,” Lucinda whispered to Whitman, and he took over.

He busied himself with preheating the oven and creating a foil tent over the dish, one eye on the food and one eye on the living room. Whitman’s chest felt like a giant fist had grabbed him and started to crush, the ache was so intense. He couldn’t imagine how much stronger it must be for Travis.

Whitman’s phone dinged with a text and Travis’s rang seconds later. Lucinda answered and nodded when their eyes met. Travis slumped in relief, which must have been the signal to Mr. Wigglesworth that his lap was available. Somehow the dog seemed to sense when he was needed.