The reunion was only two months away, and Debbie was still trying to locate people. She and Tanya, friends again after long years of estrangement, thought they had remembered everyone that had been part of their group back then. Thirty years was a long gap between one place and the next, but the two women had long memories. They also had photographs, memorobilia and email. As they found one person, they'd seek new information about whoever was still missing. Slowly the list grew until Debbie was confident it was complete and no name was missing. She only wished the same could be said of actual contact information.

She had eight people on her "named-but-missing" list, people for whom she had no phone, no email, not even the city or state they lived in. "Named-but-missing:" that was exactly how Debbie had the list titled in her spreadsheet ("n-b-m" on the worksheet tab). Paul Stram, Penny Davis, Tracy Rupman, Ben Hempstead, Linda Ericson, Stacy Crane, Mike Stuart. Linda and Stacy had married, changed their names, and not left anyone behind who could give Debbie and Tanya a single clue as to where they'd moved. Like Paul, Penny, Tracy, Ben and Mike, they'd simply disappeared. Paul, they were sure, had changed his name, perhaps his identity; he was fleeing a brother who was psychotic but, since his only goal was to kill Paul, the police were unable to keep locked away. So Paul fled. The others were simply invisible. They had gone off to college, the military, jobs "somewhere else," and they had just disappeared. No amount of googling could locate them, and Debbie had done her damnedest. Weekly, she went down the list, entering the names and searching pages of results, convinced that eventually one of them would something, anything, that would float them into view. A job promotion, a traffic violation, publish a blog. Nothing.

Jane had her own page: "Dead." Debbie could not bear to leave her off the list but could not bring herself to describe it further. "Dead" was good enough for a goddamn list. Almost thirty years now, and she still couldn't get over it, still could not accept that it had happened. She tried to think about Jane now and then, but it was not possible. And even though she and Tanya had reconciled, they did not speak to one another about Jane. There was enough in life to catch up on without that, enough pain and surprise and happiness.

She wondered, as she avoided that page of the spreadsheet, if anyone spoke of Jane. If she was more than a horror, an aberation, a mistake, someone lost too soon, too wrong. She was Jane to Debbie and nothing more. She couldn't bear anything more.

And then there was Mike. Mike "Stuart" as she had had him in the list. Google turned up dozens of Mike and Michael Stuart's, many of them intriguing and none of them their Mike. Most were easy to eliminate, their age or looks; Mike was not African-American, or Latino (Miguel "Mike" Stuart, a chemical engineer of the right age in San Antonio) or Asian (Masamoto Stuart, also the right age but born in Kyoto and adopted as an infant by Len and Melissa Stuart of Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1957). Mike Stuart was not the twenty-year-old guitar whiz and leader of the Sacramento-area band "Slurpy" (discovered first when 7-11 sued the band over the name, a case the band had won but only with the financial support of an area Circle K franchise owner who loved the idea of causing his rivals annoyance and an embarrassing court loss).

As it turned out, Mike "Stuart" was not Mike Stuart at all; one day in mid-April, Debbie had suddenly realized the obvious: She had been spelling his name wrong! That evening she had easily located Mike Stewart in Portland and, confident he was the right person, had sent him an email asking if he was "the Mike Stewart from Youth Fellowship in Billings". And oh my god, it was! She felt relief, embarrassment, excitement. A name off the list, one more for the reunion! And he was only three hours away? All these years, and they had been this close?

Closer, as it turned out. He had lived in Seattle for three years, in the mid-Nineties! Had lived less than ten miles away from her, and neither had had the slightest clue. They had not been close in high school, had gone to different schools in fact, had known each other from Youth Fellowship where they were more acquaintances than friends. They had shared friends, had associated with each other coincidentally more than anything else; it was no wonder they had made no effort to keep in touch after high school. He'd gone to college in Iowa, had married a woman a few years after he'd graduated and moved with her to Santa Rosa, California, before they'd moved to Portland, had another kid, divorced, and he'd simply gotten with his life as best he could.

And she had spent fourteen years living within hours of him, going through her own travails with Jack and then Tom, the loneliness that had finally resolved itself into a true peace thanks to letting go of the past and finding some great friends in the place she lived. It would have been fun to have found Mike earlier, especially when he lived in Seattle, but he wouldn't have been — well, she didn't like to think of it as "use," but he was a stranger to her, even more so than in high school. What relationship did they have? What difference would he have made in her life? He was a good guy, no doubt, but she needed her close friends — Ellen, Sandra and Thad, Meg — not the reappearance of old acquaintances from Youth Group.

Now, however, it was different. Old acquaintances from Youth Group was exactly what she was looking for, everyone she could locate and invite to the reunion. Cajole and push to return to Billngs for one weekend in July. She'd located all but eight people now, had gotten all but ten to agree, and now she'd found Mike! Mike, now that she'd spelled his name correctly, and Mike who was absolutely adamant with his "No" but who she found absolutely charming in his emails. Nothing she could say would make him change his mind about the reunion, although he had told her in one email that "i am open to bribery, $5,000 and a no-holds-barred date with one of the Seahawk cheerleaders, you've got connections don't you," and while she did have connections, pimping seemed an inappropriate way to get someone to attend a reunion of a church youth group!

But he had made her laugh out loud, and however at peace she felt in herself, a good laugh seemed forever rare. So she had written up a reply in Photoshop, used stamps to make the text look redacted, and sent him the image, trusting what she thought to be a wicked sense of humor for him to get the joke. Which she did, and that was so much fun. Over the course of a week, a few dozen emails each, some short and joking, others longer and open, honest, revealing; before she knew, Debbie realized she was falling in love with him. The realization amazed her, both that she could fall for someone like this and that she could fall in love at all.

"After Jack went off with the bimbo," she told Ellen over drinks one evening after work, only two days after the shock hit her, "I didn't think I had it in me to fall in love again. I already think I must be insane."

Ellen, a strange mix of pragmatic and romantic, would have none of it.

"Debbie," she drawled, relentlessly holding on to her South Texas accent, "y'all never gonna give that up. Love's a tick waiting to get under your skin and the damn thing's never farther away than the next place you walk. Y'all be daid" — exaggerating for effect and because she loved even the audience of one Debbie presented — "before you stop falling in love."

And then, looking at her in mock sternness, adding: "Bit is bit, gal."

Which had made Debbie laugh, and they had talked through all the possibilities, including, for Debbie's sake, that she might be insane and in need of institutionalizing. In the end, though, she'd gone home and, only slightly tipsy, had written Mike and, out of nowhere, had started writing about chocolate and sex. She had just typed out the words, hit the "Send" button and then realized what she'd done. She'd sat and stared at the computer for a bit, wondered what Mike would think, and then she'd simply decided, Fuck it, I don't care what he thinks. He'll either be cool or not, and I'll with whatever. it'll be good or it'll be crappy, and either I'll be fine. To her own surprise, she meant it.

Fuck it, she thought one last time before shutting down the computer and heading off to bed, and, to her surprise (in the morning, when next she thought of it), she didn't think about it again.

That Mike took it in fun and replied with questions about dark versus milk chocolate, and their varying effects on both sex and happiness (and the relationship of those to one another), which allowed her to drop hints about how much she enjoyed all of the above but that the consquences of each was not to be taken lightly — "just ask my thighs before I joined a gym three years ago," she'd written. And it was all in fun, just play, and whether or not it would or could be more, she didn't want to know.