Summary

“Week Four” contains two chapters. In “Gretel,” the women return for their meeting at the YMCA. Gretel arrives first. She always wears headphones, but she never listens to any music. Instead, she is always hyper-focused and paying attention to everything around her. Will talks to Raina and asks her if she wants to share her story, but Raina shakes her head and asks Gretel if she wants to go instead. Bernice comes in late—with the stool who never speaks, and says she wants to get the piece of furniture to talk so that she can somehow help the woman, Astrid, stuck inside. The stool, however, does not speak, so Gretel tells her story.

She and her brother Hans went missing for three months when they were six and nine, but they never agreed on what happened to them, and they hardly ever...