“Hi, Alex. I received a book today that was marked with your store’s name as the return address. I would like to know who sent it, please.”

I can hear this Alex person typing on the other side, the click of a mouse.

“Sure thing,” he says. “What’s the name?”

“Amelia Griffin.”

The clicking stops. A full ten seconds pass before I say, “Hello? Alex?”

I can almost hear him jerk to attention over the phone. “Yes. Sorry. I’m afraid there has been a mistake.” His voice sounds rushed. “There is no record of an Amelia Griffin in our system. Is there something else I can help you with?”

If I wanted to create a still life to represent this Alex person’s voice, I would need barbed wire. A lot of it.

“That’s weird,” I say. “That’s really weird. It came to me through my local bookstore. Like, it was sent there for me to pick up. Can you look it up by the bookstore?”

“We do not ship to other bookstores. Are you sure it was our address?”

“There’s a round sticker on the back of the package that says Val’s, Lochbrook, Michigan. Is that your bookstore?”

Another stretch of silence, then a low muttered word I can’t quite make out.

“Hello?” I ask. Maybe our connection is bad, or maybe he doesn’t understand the significance of the situation. “It’s a limited edition of The Forest Between the Sea and the Sky,” I tell him. “The first Orman book? It says it’s the one hundred and first copy out of one hundred, but that makes no sense, right? Can you try looking for Jenna Williams? Maybe she’s in your system?”

I can hear that he isn’t typing. “There is no record of Jenna Williams or Amelia Griffin in our system, I’m sorry.” And here, he almost sounds sorry. “Is there something else I can help you with?”

“No … I guess not.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be of service,” Alex says, before I can add anything else. “Thanks for your call.”

Click.

I have always loved stories that attribute the thrill of adventure to a physical force—a push of insistent wind or the tug of magic. I love the idea of adventure finding us in our day-to-day boredom and beckoning us to go on a quest for something better than we leave behind.

Jenna knew that.

And, as thunder rattles my bedroom window, I can’t help but feel like this has something to do with her, that she is orchestrating it from wherever people go after they die.

It would be so like Jenna to send me a step-by-step manual for how to grieve the loss of her, and to use Orman to deliver her instructions.