“Jody says that woman was hanging around when Cyrus was a kid. That true?”

“How would I know?”

“Have you seen a woman with long black hair?”

Behind his sunglasses she felt his eyes waiting, serpents curled beneath rocks. “Only you. Or before you shaved it all off. And Nephy.”

Izzy, nauseous, shook her head and refused the bottle of water he handed her. “Why’d you give me the fucking gun, Larry?”

His eyes darted sideways, suspicious, to see if anyone had heard. “Don’t talk loud out here like that.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“You were digging around in those mine sites. Not safe.”

“Any other reason?”

“What are you getting at?” He cocked his scarecrow head at her.

“Tell me the truth,” Izzy said. “You heard Cyrus went missing. You gave me a goddamn gun. I found his—I found his hand. Don’t bullshit me, Larry.”

“My little girl talking trash.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

He flinched a little; she could see it.

Larry said, “You sound crazy like your mother. Leave it alone.”

And though she thought she’d have faced death straight on to find out what had happened to Cyrus, something in Larry’s expression made her recoil from asking more. She remembered the kitten dangling from the clothesline like a mourner’s handkerchief when she was a kid, and the way Larry had lurched out of the trailer, pinched the clothespins, and let the body collapse flimsily into the dirt. He’d said the kitten must have gotten out, someone must have caught it and put it there.

What had really happened? This was the question, over and over again. What had happened when she was a child and, more importantly, what had happened to Cyrus?

She’d leave, but she couldn’t leave this alone.

◆◆◆

Izzy arrived by nightfall at the retreat center in Joshua Tree. The stars glistened fish-like, as if the sky were made of water, and the air, too, gleamed with an aqueous cold.

The palm trees, silhouetted blackly against the sky, had been necklaced with phosphorescent Christmas lights.

Izzy entered the tiled courtyard and went through the door into the spacious front room lined with columns. The potted palms around the fountain twinkled with more white lights that turned the air diaphanous. What date is it today, Izzy wondered for a moment. When was Christmas? How had time passed when her heart had frozen so solid and still?

A small group of people—fewer than the last time she was there—mingled around the fountain, drinking beer and wine. Two life-sized wooden statues, a man and woman with inlaid black eyes, one wearing a cobra headdress and the other a wig of black curls, guarded the door, hands crossed over their chests. Izzy couldn’t remember having seen them there before.