“Opportunity,” said Trish, “but hardly motive.” She glanced at me critically. Part of me was still standing on the roadside in Runagate, listening to their voices far away. I wanted to retreat: into myself, into my mother’s arms.

“She said they drove in from Carter’s Crossing to pick up the delivery, since the bus doesn’t go there,” said Gary. “Margie at the Crossing doesn’t have the phone on, but it’s not too far”—Trish looked pointedly at my sandwiches—“we can find out who they are, clear all this up.”

“Which is no more than any intelligent person could have discovered,” said Trish. “Why didn’t you let her make her own investigations?”

I didn’t catch Gary’s reply. His voice was faint as bees.

Saplings and taller trees and overarching boughs, the swoop and dip of wires, like the lope of something keeping pace with us. Cages of alternating shadow and brilliance. The sun hot through the window, like a greenhouse, like a glass coffin. My nose and lips felt numb. My heart clenched.

“Oh, stop— Gary, pull over!” Trish’s voice was muffled. I was retching out of the door and then I was down from the truck, wrist-deep in thick, soft dust, pebbles against my knees, grass pricking my shoulders through my cardigan’s short sleeves. I dug my fingers into the earth.

“We drive for five minutes…” grumbled Gary.

“Let it out,” said Trish. Her rough fingers, gathering back my hair, were unpleasantly familiar. I shrugged her away. I was empty. I wanted my mother there to say all was well, don’t worry. But she was asleep in Runagate. Only the sun rested like a hand on my head and the back of my dress and my legs. I breathed in the sleeping-animal smell of the grass, the dirt pressed with the questing arrows of birds, the slim prints of wallabies, the sweep of scales, the rounded fist of paws scratched by the tips of nails. Most so small or narrow, but here one large as the palm of my own hand, there the crescent of a hoof. The drumming of earth.

No—Gary starting the engine. I staggered to my feet. Trish passed me a green plastic water canteen and looked at me narrowly.

“I’m well,” I lied. But I was better. Trish grunted. Back inside, she made me keep the window open, although the wind tangled my hair.

“It’s quiet in here,” said Trish over the roar of air. She poked at the radio. No sound emerged. “Something’s stuck in the cassette player. Why aren’t you talking, Gary?”

“I’m pissed off at you,” said Gary, without conviction. “Why aren’t you talking?”

“Because Betty here thinks I’m bad company.”

“Tina,” Gary corrected her.

“Bettina,” I said, and added, “I never said that.” Not in so many words.