That question came from the mayor. Don’t worry about it.

But did you miss your therapy session?

Shit, I thought. My appointment was first thing this morning, and I’d completely blanked. I explained to the chief that I’d been in with the teacher’s wife and that I’d reschedule.

A minute later the phone pulsed and I saw one more text from the boss:

You saved my girl’s life, P.T. But Fuller was right that you need to recover. Right now just make those therapy appointments. Let your partner assist Abe if he needs a hand.

I stood up. My office windows were cranked open, and a smell like medicine had drifted in.

The anise hyssops in the flower bed alongside the building had gotten long and wispy and reeked like an odd mix of carnations and chemicals.

Sometimes, when I’m coming down from the stress of a case, I want a drink. It’s a reactive instinct for someone in recovery. A reward for survival. And lately when this happens, I take a drive. Being in motion soothes me in a way that AA meetings don’t.

I left work, even though it was midafternoon. Got in my Silverado and drove home. Grabbed my bulldog.

Purvis was eight years old and reddish-brown, with white blotches on his body and a large underbite. He also had a tendency to drool when excited, which he was by the time I unlocked the front door.

I led him outside. Rolled out an old UGA blanket onto the passenger seat of my truck and placed my dog atop it. Within a minute of driving, Purvis was asleep. Apparently being in motion soothes him too.

I pulled over just past a bridge along I-32.

Grabbing Purvis, I climbed out onto a slice of grayish-brown granite that protruded over the edge of the Tullumy River.

There are places in the world with magical value. The religious speak quietly when they enter churches. Sports fans grow silent when they walk the hallowed grounds of their favorite stadiums. And for me, this was my mystic place. A strip of forest with a river that had both saved and ruined me, surrounded by trees that transcended time and the geological diversity of northern Georgia. The truth is that Mason Falls is a place so densely populated with minerals and rocks that the only way to know it is to listen quietly as nature peels back each layer, like a hundred-year-old onion.

Below me, the water was green and dark, and I sat there for an hour, talking to my family. Speaking words into the wind, right at the place where my wife, Lena, and my son, Jonas, had gone into the water. Where the Jeep had left the road and slid down the embankment.

You’ve gotta let yourself off the hook, P.T.

I glanced down.

It was Purvis. He speaks to me sometimes. In a voice that sounds just like mine, but with a touch more sanity. And maybe some sarcasm.