Chapter 9: Alive

I told Cal I wanted her alone, and the next morning he sent Waylon to the farm store forty minutes away for a case of firewood starter.

"He'll be gone ninety minutes if he stops for coffee," Cal said. "He'll stop for coffee."

I walked to Tent 3 at nine and knocked on the frame.

Shanna looked out with her hair in a towel, in leggings and an old nursing school sweatshirt.

"Jo," she said, surprised. "Is it cocoa already?"

"I need to talk to you," I said. "It can't wait. And it's going to be hard to hear."

Her smile left.

She had spent a career walking into rooms where something terrible was about to be said, and I saw her put on her calm.

"Okay," she said. "Come in."

Tent 3 had a rug, a lantern, and a framed photo of the two of them on the nightstand.

I did not look at the photo.

I sat on the edge of the cot and took out my wallet.

I put my driver's license on the blanket between us.

SAMANTHA M. AMES, it said, with my address on Maple Court and my face.

Shanna read it, and her eyes moved to my face and back.

"That's a coincidence," she said.

"It isn't."

I put my phone beside it and opened the photo of the dock in the Finger Lakes.

It was the same picture she had in her locket, without the crease.

I had a second one, from a minute later, in which Waylon stood behind me with his arms around my waist and his chin on my shoulder.

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