Josh was sleeping soundly, the room a peaceful oasis for the next hour before I had to leave to meet Gabe and his drug-dealer friend. I checked Facebook on my phone, saw what a few college friends were up to, caught up on the news.

A doctor in Spokane had been charged with more than eight hundred counts of illegally selling opioids; a police officer in Oregon had stoned a squirrel and killed it; a murder-suicide in Tacoma. I tapped on local news, my eye snagging on a story about a drug dealer called Santiago Martinez who’d been murdered over in Mill Creek.

This, I realized, was the case Nate was working on. The case that was taking him away from us but could get him promoted to lieutenant.

The story outlined a man with a history of drug abuse and dealing, who’d left Seattle for a fresh start and gotten caught up in a turf war that had left him dead.

Nate was quoted in the article: “I would like to appeal to anyone who was in the area at the time of the incident to come forward, if they haven’t already done so. We can assure the public that the Skamania community is very safe. We’re doing all that we can to establish the full circumstances of this case.”

After a while reading the news, my eyes started to droop, exhaustion smearing the room around me.

Glass shattering.

My mother’s scream.

Daddy sobbing, “Don’t leave me!”

I jolted awake, my body covered in a cold, sticky sweat. A shadow hovered over me. I gasped and lurched upright.

“Mommy?” Josh’s voice. I put a hand out to touch him, felt his skin, warm under mine.

“Josh?”

“Were you having a bad dream?”

I pulled him against me, still panting. “I guess I was.”

“What was it about?”

It was a memory more than a nightmare. Only somehow the images had shifted, revealing things that hadn’t happened. Instead of being inside the car, I’d dreamed I was on the road watching as it careened toward me. I screamed as the car abruptly jerked to the right, hurtled through the air, and flipped onto its side. And then the dream had started over again.

Over and over I’d watched, unable to do anything to stop the accident. Unable to do anything to save them.

“I can’t remember,” I lied.

“I had a bad dream too.” He snuggled into me, his body warm, smelling just faintly of yeast.

“What happened?”

“I builded a sand castle and then I went inside, and a big giant came and he stepped on it and everybody in the sand castle died.”

My breath caught in my throat. I pulled him tight against my chest. “I’m so sorry. That sounds like it was really scary.”