Locking the office door behind me, I lift the picture off the wall and flip it around. When I don’t pass out, I scoff at my discharge papers for listing “lifting heavy objects” as something I shouldn’t do with a concussion. I lean the picture against the wall and step back to take it in. Covering the frame’s brown paper backing is a five-foot-long timeline with pictures and newspaper articles webbing out in all directions. My own mini crime wall.

I squint, scrutinizing the details I’ve memorized. Prior to my dad’s death, there’d been eleven organized attacks. Thirteen deaths in nine years. When the attacks first began, they occurred every couple months. I barely remember that time, but according to my parents it was the scariest time to live in Chicago.

Kneeling down, I trace my finger across attacks numbers nine through twelve, all separated by five or six months. My finger pauses over the twelfth, my dad’s name and date written in bold, black pen.

His absence hurts. Every day. I close my eyes, inhaling the scent of leather and paper—his scent. It’s the only room where he still exists. His chair. His desk. His antique desk lamp. His paperweight holding a picture of Annie and me from the NICU the day we were born. Side by side. Each hooked up to our own ventilator. As fragile and helpless as we look, I’ve always loved that picture. It was one moment in time when I had a sister.

My eyes wrench open when Dopney’s screams start rattling around my head. I blink them away, bury them, send them racing down the dark tunnel to my gut before I start thinking about whether my dad cried out when the Swarm closed in on him.

Hana, Hawaii. I cling to my happy thought and immerse myself in the memory, hearing waves crashing and swishing, seeing white foam swirling across the black rock beach. I smell the fresh drops of rain as they speckle the ocean and watch as the sun peeks above the horizon, bringing light to a deep purple sky.

I stay in the moment, aware of my breath and my limbs until the trembling subsides. When my hand is steady enough, I grab a pen from the desk and push forward.

Extending the timeline, I add today’s date and Dopney’s name. The two-year gap between my dad and Dopney is longer than any lapse of time.

Charlie barks so suddenly, my hand jerks. The black pen makes a jagged dash along the brown paper backing. I lick my thumb and attempt to rub it off, but it smears, making it worse.

“Charlie,” I say through gritted teeth.