Is this place starting to feel like home?

Birdie is standing on one leg in the shallow water near the meteorite. Her other leg is tucked up behind her.

“What are you doing, Birdie?” I ask her.

She points to the flooded field. There’s a sandhill crane standing very still on one foot.

“Oh, I see.”

I gently touch the big rock the way I did when I first saw it, running my fingers over the silver specks and the thumbprints. The rainbow water Miles Morgan talked about hasn’t completely faded—there are still faint flashes of green and yellow in the rushing stream below us.

I feel the little stone move in my pocket, as if it’s being pulled toward the meteorite.

“I like the water and the cranes. I hope you’re happy here,” I say to the meteorite.

When Birdie and I get back to Nana’s, I get the note and Charlotte Rose’s card out of my pocket. I take a deep breath and make the call.

Chapter 18

Diamond is the hardest known natural substance on Earth. Ancient people knew no way to cut it!

—Christine Petersen, Diamonds

“I THINK YOU need to start at the beginning.” The policewoman, Charlotte Rose, is back at Nana’s house five minutes after I call the number on her card. She taps her pen on the kitchen table and studies the note with James’s dried blood on it.

GIVE US BACK OUR WATER

Mom walks past the note, but I can’t tell if she sees it or not.

“First the meteorite landed. Then it started flooding the field. Then our house washed away—”

The policewoman interrupts.

“I got that part already. How about you start with this note here.”

“It came in on the brick that hit James. It was tied to it with a rubber band.”

She writes very quickly on her pad.

“I can’t find the rubber band. Maybe it got swept up with the glass.”

“Let’s skip the rubber band, Henry. Then what happened?”

“I took the note because I knew it was for me.”

“Yes, I know you took the note. And why did you think it was for you? I don’t see your name on it.” Charlotte Rose taps the note. Rap. Rap.

“I was the one who saw the meteorite fall. And the meteorite flooded the road, and then the town wells went dry.”

“Those facts are true, but I still don’t see why that makes the note directed at you. You didn’t make the meteorite fall here, did you?”

I don’t think Charlotte Rose has room on her little pad for me to explain how my dowsing stick pointed upward or how Birdie heard a hizzzz sound in the sky the night before the stone fell.