It’s another reminder of how different he and I really are. The prospect of returning to my condo—brand-new, impeccably clean, modern, and practically empty—fills me with dread.

I know now that there’s a hole inside me. A hole that can’t be patched or filled with files or paperwork or legal cases or new clothes or miles or happy hours or bartenders.

This was never about the water. It’s not even about Kaycee, not really.

It’s about me.

“This is exactly what we came to do, Abby,” Joe adds, softer now.

But that’s where he’s wrong.

—

When I was a kid, the reservoir was the biggest body of water I’d seen, and it was the center of the whole world. The south side was always the good side, the area with people whose parents had jobs as electricians and telemarketers and, later, at Optimal. On the west side is a wild nest of woods. The east side is where the skeleton of Optimal gradually rose up, like a shipwreck in reverse.

And to the north, there’s an old dump of ramshackle homes, a lot of them empty, the trees growing thick between them. It’s only a mile walk through the woods from my dad’s house. A mile of woods that I played in as a kid—I would sit with my back against a rock, surrounded by trees, imagining I could live there forever like a fairy when I knew my mother was dying. Where I played hide and seek with Kaycee, and where we buried Chestnut.

I take the dirt roads instead of the woods, roads baked in heat. Flies buzz over something dead and, through the trees, the reservoir shimmers.

When I climb out of the car, I feel a little like I’m on the wrong side of a microscope. Here, too, the residents run their sewage straight into the trees down the hill. It can cost four grand for a new water hookup, and no one around here has that kind of money. They must be filling their taps and showers with water from the reservoir, like all the poorest families do. No wonder Shariah’s kid was born disfigured.

Shariah Dobbs lives at #12 Tillsdale Road, which is hard to find because these roads are more like pathways and none of them have signs. She isn’t home, so I scrawl a note on a scrap of paper I unearth from my bag and tuck it into her mailbox along with my business card.

Returning to my car, my eyes land on the one-story house across a yard littered with car parts. A mailbox leaning off the front door is labeled Allen. It’s a common enough name, I know, but I hesitate, rolling my keys in my palm.

Cora Allen was one of Kaycee’s and Misha’s best friends. Misha told me that she wasn’t doing so well, that they weren’t in contact anymore. It’s amazing how poorly the golden girls of Barrens High have fared.

Is it a coincidence? Or did something happen to explain how fast and how far they fell?