“What the fuck?” Izzy said again. How did Sky know the names of all four of their fathers—not just Cyrus’s but Izzy’s and Seth’s and Nephy’s?

“Cyrus found me. And yes, she was with him. But you were the one he loved. He was just trying to understand himself, and he got lost along the way. I didn’t know what would happen. I just let it all play itself out. And when I heard about your meeting at Bombay Beach, I asked the little ones to play the video to bring you to me.

The room spun and blurred, and Izzy steadied herself against the wall. “What? What’s in this?” She threw the cup of tea onto the tiled floor, and it shattered.

“Lotus tea. To relax us. Sometimes thought of as a slight aphrodisiac. A little bit of opium to help with the pain,” Sky said. “You might hallucinate slightly.”

In Izzy’s mind: the framed photo of herself at thirteen with Larry and Izzy who so little resembled her mother. As a child, when they were all in the car on the highway, Izzy would imagine Leanne screaming at Larry to pull over to the side of the road and telling Izzy to get out. “You’re not mine,” she’d hear Leanne say. It was both fear and fantasy. Now it was only fear she felt. Because if she was not Leanne’s, then whose was she? That woman. From the movie. She used to watch him play, Jody had said. You are all my children, Sky had said. But how? And why? And what did this have to do with the fact that Cyrus had been murdered and dismembered? It was too much to fathom at once, but it meant—it meant something. Something unspeakable.

“I’m going to help you,” said Sky, her voice a metronome, casting its spell. “At midnight in the courtyard. I will help you understand the key to becoming yourself.”

What was the scent of darkness? Izzy wondered, as she drifted into the smoke of sleep.

◆◆◆

When Izzy came back to consciousness, her mouth even drier now as if she’d been sucking on linen, she was lying outside on a divan, looking up at the ultraviolet of an early evening sky. Black shapes swooped above her—a formation of birds. Hieroglyphs, she found herself thinking. She heard the glass-bead-tinkling of a fountain. Smelled fire in the air. Burning minerals.

Bare-armed and bare-legged, the cool of satin light on her thighs, someone had taken off her clothes, put her in underwear—lace underwear?—and a dress. A satin dress. White. The fabric caught lightly on her rough hands. She was aware of all of this but unable to fully respond or react.