I point my car toward Dougsville, and the clinic where May mentioned that Tatum was taken. I’m feeling a little better, a little more in control. I don’t need Joe. I don’t need anyone. All I need is the truth. Still, the periphery of my vision keeps warping in the heat, shimmering into a mirage. Lack of sleep, nothing more.

Dougsville is twelve miles from Barrens, accessible only by the kind of flat roads that make speed limits seem like an inside joke. Corn whips by, tossing its green arms toward the sky. I think of my dream. Was it a dream? Of heat and fire. I think of Kaycee’s portraits scattered around my rental.

My phone rings almost continuously: first a call from Joe, then a local number, then Joe’s again. He’s probably wondering where I went. I silence the ringer.

Growing up, the Dougsville kids struck us all as stuck up: Theirs was the first Walmart in the whole county, and on its heels came the clinic, then a brewery. Their football team was always number one. It’s really little more than a single long strip, all car dealerships, aboveground pool installations, and churches. The clinic shares a parking lot with a big hunting and fishing retail; a sign in the window directs customers to the back for licenses and ammunition.

I head to the Walmart for a plastic-wrapped bouquet of flowers and a Get Well card. The flowers look pretty but exhale a moldy vapor, and for a second that’s just how I feel, like some rotten thing plastered over with a bow and good intentions. I should turn around. I should leave Tatum alone. I should let her get better.

But I don’t.

The clinic is small, bright, and clean. A receptionist at the desk politely asks me whether I’m a family member when I request to see Tatum.

“I’m a lawyer,” I say. The word lawyer is like the word police: the verbal equivalent of a bomb. No one wants to be the one caught holding the package. “Is Mrs. Klauss here?”

She shakes her head. Her eyes have widened into a caricature of alarm. “Go on back,” she says. “I’m sure it’s all right.” So I skirt around the desk and pass through the double doors.

The clinic has only a few examination rooms and Tatum’s room is the last one on the left. It has been transformed into a hothouse of cards and carnations. Tethered to an IV in a hospital bed, Tatum looks young, and very small. Beautiful, too. I think she must be sleeping, but as I ease the door shut behind me, she opens her eyes. They are a shocking, startling green.

“Who are you?” she asks. But it isn’t an accusation. She sounds genuinely curious.

“My name is Abby,” I say. I lift the flowers so she can see them. “I brought these for you. Looks like you don’t need them.”

She closes her eyes and shrugs. I clear a space on the counter for her latest offering.