Scarlet

grandma was out there somewhere and Scarlet was going to find her if she had to dig up dirt and blackmail every last detective in Europe.
    The sun was sinking fast, sending Scarlet’s elongated shadow down the drive. Beyond the gravel, the whispering crops of cornstalks and leafy sugar beets stretched out in every direction, meeting up with the first spray of stars. A cobblestone house disrupted the view to the west, with two windows glowing orange. Their only neighbor for miles.
    For more than half her life, this farm had been Scarlet’s paradise. Over the years, she’d fallen in love with it more deeply than she’d known a person could fall in love with land and sky—and she knew her grandma felt the same. Though she didn’t like to think of it, she was aware that someday she would inherit the farm, and she sometimes fantasized about growing old here. Happy and content, with perpetual dirt beneath her fingernails and an old house that was in constant need of repair.
    Happy and content—like her grandmother.
    She wouldn’t have just left. Scarlet knew it.
    She lugged the crates into the barn, stacking them in the corner so the androids could fill them again tomorrow, then grabbed the pail of chicken feed. Scarlet walked while she fed, tossing big handfuls of kitchen scraps in her path as the chickens scurried around her ankles.
    Rounding the corner of the hangar, she halted.
    A light was on in the house, on the second floor.
    In her grandmother’s bedroom.
    The pail slipped from her fingers. The chickens squawked and darted away, before clustering back around the spilled feed.
    She stepped over them and ran, the gravel skidding beneath her shoes. Her heart was swelling, bursting, the sprint already making her lungs burn as she yanked open the back door. She took the stairs two at a time, the old wood groaning beneath her.
    The door to her grandma’s bedroom was open and she froze in the doorway, panting, grasping the jamb.
    A hurricane had come through the room. Every drawer was pulled out from the dresser, clothes and toiletries had been dumped onto the floor. The quilts from the bed were piled haphazardly at its foot, the mattress at an angle, the digital picture frames beside the window all pulled from their brackets, leaving dark spots on the wall where the sunlight hadn’t managed to fade the painted plaster.
    A man was on his knees beside the bed, tearing through a box of her grandmother’s old military uniforms. He jumped up when he saw Scarlet, nearly hitting his head on the low oak beam that spanned the ceiling.
    The world spun. Scarlet almost didn’t recognize him—it had been years since she’d seen him, but it could have been decades for how much he had aged. A beard was taking over his normally clean-shaven jawline. His hair was matted on one side, sticking up straight on the other. He was pale and gaunt, like he hadn’t had a proper meal in weeks.
    “Dad?”
    He clutched a blue flight jacket to his chest.
    “What are you doing here?” She surveyed the chaos again, heart still pounding. “What are you doing ?”
    “There’s something here,” he said, his voice rough and unused. “She’s hidden something.” He peered down at the jacket, then tossed it onto the bed. Kneeling, he started digging through the box again. “I need to find it.”
    “Find what? What are you talking about?”
    “She’s gone,” he whispered. “She’s not coming back. She won’t ever know and I … I have to find it. I have to know why.”
    The smell of cognac swirled through the air and Scarlet’s heart hardened. She didn’t know how he’d found out about his mother’s disappearance, but for him to just assume all hope was lost, so easily, so quickly, and to think he would be entitled to a single thing that belonged to her, after he’d abandoned them both. To go so many years without a single comm, only to show up drunk and start tearing through her grandmother’s things—
    Scarlet had the sudden urge to call the police, except she was mad at them too.
    “Get out! Get out of our house!”
    Unfazed, he started to pile the mishmash of clothes back into the box.
    Face burning, Scarlet rounded the bed and grabbed his arm, trying to yank him to his feet. “Stop it!”
    He hissed and fell back onto the old wooden floorboards. He scurried away from her as he would from a rabid dog, clutching his arm. His gaze was stark madness.
    Scarlet drew back, surprised, before planting clenched fists on