When she was ready, they went over the basics for the report: names, address, phone number, and employment, her previous residence, when she’d moved to Edenton, the reason she was driving, how she stopped for gas but stayed ahead of the storm, the deer in the road, how she lost control of the car, the accident itself. Sergeant Huddle noted it all on a flip pad. When it was all on paper, he looked up at her almost expectantly.

“Are you kin to J. B. Anderson?”

John Brian Anderson had been her maternal grandfather, and she nodded.

Sergeant Huddle cleared his throat-like everyone in Edenton, he’d known the Andersons. He glanced at the flip pad again.

“Taylor said that Kyle is four years old?”

Denise nodded. “He’ll be five in October.”

“Could you give me a general description-something I could put out on the radio?”

“The radio?”

Sergeant Huddle answered patiently. “Yeah, we’ll put it on the police emergency network so that other departments can have the information. In case someone finds him, picks him up, and calls the police. Or if, by some chance, he wanders up to someone’s house and they call the police. Things like that.”

He didn’t tell her that area hospitals were also routinely informed-there was no need for that just yet.

Denise turned away, trying to order her thoughts.

“Um . . .” It took a few seconds for her to speak. Who can describe their kids exactly, in terms of numbers and figures? “I don’t know . . . three and a half feet tall, forty pounds or so. Brown hair, green eyes . . . just a normal little boy of his age. Not too big or too small.”

“Any distinguishing features? A birthmark, things like that?”

She repeated his question to herself, but everything seemed so disjointed, so unreal, so completely unfathomable. Why did they need this? A little boy lost in the swamp . . . how many could there be on a night like this?