24. July 26, 2021

When Hol­ly arrives at the Jet Mart, she finds Emilio Her­rera, the clerk, will­ing to talk about Bon­nie Rae Dahl, a reg­u­lar cus­tomer who has recent­ly gone miss­ing. Emilio recalls Bon­nie’s friend­ly nature and con­sis­tent patron­age, high­light­ing her kind­ness and rou­tine pur­chas­es. Despite exam­in­ing her sur­round­ings for any unusu­al activ­i­ty on the night Bon­nie dis­ap­peared, Hol­ly learns noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant from Emilio regard­ing any sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty or the pres­ence of a par­tic­u­lar van she inquires about. Hol­ly also shows him a pic­ture of a miss­ing boy, Peter Stein­man, with Emilio only able to pro­vide vague recog­ni­tion.

Back at her apart­ment, Hol­ly deals with a harsh online com­ment and makes a dif­fi­cult call to Pen­ny Dahl, Bon­nie’s moth­er, to share her grow­ing sus­pi­cion that Bon­nie was abduct­ed. Despite the grim con­ver­sa­tion, Hol­ly feels stumped about her next steps in the inves­ti­ga­tion.

Jerome, Hol­ly’s friend, calls from New York, excit­ed about a suc­cess­ful book deal, con­trast­ing Hol­ly’s cur­rent pro­fes­sion­al stand­still. Hol­ly’s lack of progress con­tin­ues to weigh on her as she reflects on Emi­ly and Rod­dy Har­ris, an elder­ly cou­ple indi­rect­ly involved with the dis­ap­pear­ances. They are aware of Hol­ly’s inves­ti­ga­tion and dis­cuss poten­tial mea­sures to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion, includ­ing sin­is­ter impli­ca­tions if Hol­ly becomes a prob­lem.

Bar­bara Robin­son, Jerome’s sis­ter, gets a call from Jerome shar­ing his news and touch­es briefly on Hol­ly’s inves­ti­ga­tion, though Bar­bara is pre­oc­cu­pied with her own projects. That night, Hol­ly dreams of her past, lead­ing her to reflect on her rela­tion­ship with her father, sig­ni­fied by a Latin-writ­ten post­card from him.

This chap­ter dives into Hol­ly’s pro­fes­sion­al chal­lenges and per­son­al reflec­tions amidst her inves­ti­ga­tion into sev­er­al dis­ap­pear­ances, jux­ta­pos­ing her per­se­ver­ance with the nuanced lives and impli­ca­tions of those around her.