The Empty Chair [antikvár]

. one She came here to lay flowers at the place where the boy died and the girl was kidnapped. She came here because she was a heavy girl and had a pocked face and not many friends. She came because she was expected to. She came because she wanted to. Ungainly and sweating, twenty-six-year-old Lydia Johansson walked along the dirt shoulder of Route 112, where she'd parked her Honda Accord, then stepped carefully down the hill to the muddy bank where Blackwater Canal met the opaque Paquenoke River. She came because she thought it was the right thing to do. She came even though she was afraid. It wasn't long after dawn but this August had been the hottest in years in North Carolina and Lydia was already sweating through her nurse's whites by the time she started toward the clearing on the riverbank, surrounded by willows and túpelo gum and broad-leafed bay trees. She easily found the place she was looking for; the yellow police tape was very evident through the haze. Early morning sounds. Loons, an animal foraging in the copious brush nearby, hot wind through sedge and swamp grass. The Empty Chair /II