Izzy knew she had to trust her premonitions now, though she would rather have run from them—screaming. She stayed up the rest of the night searching for more information about the advisory online. In the morning, she called the police and asked about the remains. The officer she spoke to said the body had not yet been identified, but she would certainly be notified if there was a connection to her case.

“When?” she said, trying not to shriek like a lunatic. “When will you identify them?”

“We’ll let you know.”

She hung up. When she and Cyrus and Seth and Nephy were younger, they had hung out in mineshafts sometimes. Joe had said that Cyrus talked about going down into those mines and not coming back up. Should she go down into those mines now? Maybe she needed to do this as some kind of penance. For giving up on Cyrus so easily, for sleeping with a man she didn’t even know. And maybe she’d find something important underground.

She took from a drawer the scissors with which she had trimmed Cyrus’s hair. She yanked her own hair into a ponytail. This hair, so thick, had protected Izzy her whole life—from the sun, from the cold; it shielded her face from the eyes of men. At the same time, it made her vulnerable. As a child she’d wanted to cut it, but Larry hadn’t let her. “I don’t want you looking like a boy.” Now, Izzy tugged the ponytail to the side and sawed it off as if it were a live thing.

Like a warrior. More like Cyrus. And I’ll be less encumbered in order to look for him.

Part of my penance.

Izzy picked up Cyrus’s electric razor. It still had remnants of his hair caught in the blade. Seeing the little strands of black hair made her gasp with fresh pain.

She put the razor down.

She picked up the scissors again and hacked her hair shorter, short as she could. Long black strands lay strewn in the sink, like a shredded fright wig. Without hair she looked ugly, she thought, naked and small.

Then she took the razor dusted with Cyrus’s cells to her head. And she buzzed.

◆◆◆

“What a nice surprise.” Larry shambled out of the trailer, followed by Leanne. Larry’s lips shone from what Izzy guessed was rabbit grease. His belt buckle was in the shape of an eagle, and Izzy thought of the kid on the Missing Persons of America website who resembled Cyrus, the one with the long hair and the tattoo on his chest. That beautiful lost boy. “But you look like shit,” Larry said.

“What happened to your hair?” Leanne asked. “You’re different.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.”

They both surveyed her as if she were a barren plot of land or an empty hen house.