39.
It was quiet in the closed-up apartment. Ruby was gone so often that the coffeepot was covered in dust. The top of the fridge
had a rind on it; the antiseptic insides held little besides a bowl of withered cherries, a half-empty yogurt, and a chunk
of cheddar cheese, hardening in an opened wrapper.
If only Ruby could see, the bone thought. She had been right: There would be more victims. There was the pink flag for Charise,
not far from the red flag for Desirée in Portland, and the new flag for Rosanna Higginbottom.
There was enough red for the cluster to be clear.
But there was something else.
Slowly, like a man traveling and taking his time, the red stream parted the Midwest, and here and there were other flags,
also red, and then there was a sudden burst of color in Georgia. Especially in Union City, and in Hammock County.
Another cluster.
In Georgia, the red deepened into purple and then blue as the years passed, and Ruby would soon add flags to this map for
the women whose reports she’d recently found—so many missing women.
There is one flag the bone wants Ruby to consider—it is a blue that matches the southern sky.
It is the flag that says Betty Dubois, and the bone knows what happened.