Pia had no idea where she was, so she tried to size up the situation. She was cold, she knew that. She had been in a house, and she couldn’t see any other houses around, or any lights. She stared into the dark in front of the house. Was that water? Yes. A river? A lake? Was it the ocean? She had no idea. She saw the light of a midsize moon, mostly obscured by clouds, but she couldn’t tell if it was rising or setting. Pia kept low but started to move to her right, away from the van. She could see better now, and on the other side of the body of water she saw a single house showing one light. There were other homes, but those that she could see both across the water and the immediate neighbors were just dark geometric shapes.

Leading away from the house in a curve was a pea stone driveway, and Pia walked unsteadily along its edge, trying to keep off the stones. She felt like she was getting her legs beneath her now. Reaching a stretch of pavement, she didn’t know which way to go, left or right. She noticed she was somewhere out in the country, with forest all around. Pia made an arbitrary decision and turned right. On the pavement, she tried to up her speed to a jog, but she staggered along like a drunk. Pia guessed she’d been given some drug. Again she remembered the stabbing pain in her thigh.

The road was flat and straight and Pia passed driveways on her right but none on the left. The trees kept the road dark; there were no lights on in any of the houses she passed. Pia listened intently for the sound of the van back at the house starting up. Suddenly, the road stopped and split into a starburst of driveways leading off into the darkness. Shafts of moonlight had broken through the clouds and in a gap in the trees, Pia could make out water to her left. Water on her left, water on her right. She got the uncomfortable feeling she was heading down to the end of a peninsula.