The sting of guilt came less often, unexpected but sharp. Washing my shirt in the stream, wringing it dry, and, in the twisting, the twisting free of anguish at having lost so much in return for so little. All the usual, useless things. Because I couldn’t shake Silvina’s letter. No matter how I tried. Kept the photo, though I felt I was better off without it. Felt that Silvina had broken a contract with me. Even with the relief that there was no “ground zero” event with her fingerprints on it. As if Unitopia had been the actual pinnacle of what she could accomplish.

I told myself that sometimes powerful forces pass through your life that speak to you but, in the end, keep their own counsel. That they wash over you like an extreme weather event, then are gone.

No analysis can fill in the rest.

[103]

In the spring of the fifth year, things changed for me. The winter was harsher, or felt harsher. A near disaster slipping on some rocks and falling twenty feet down a steep slope made me less sure of my existence in the King Range. The way my body felt for weeks after. How I moved in more tentative ways and how that affected my judgment. In short, I felt old.

Even as more people were coming into the area, and federal officers had begun a standoff with a nearby Native American reservation over water rights and sovereignty. Twice I also stumbled across what I believed were right-wing militias on training exercises. Came back to my camp one night to find it ransacked, although I’d hidden anything valuable before I’d left.

I could survive among these new intrusions, but the mental strain became intense. How I blocked the outer world from my thoughts, only for it to intrude. Each time more alien, more different than memory.

By then I had no evidence Vilcapampa cared about me anymore. No evidence that the police sought me. Where I’d buried Langer, no one would ever find him. I began to think about the old house. That was what really began to draw me back at first. A fixation on what it was like now. It might be in foreclosure, but it might not. My husband had kept up the mortgage and property tax as long as he could. I might have a little while before it was no longer mine. Or, at least, it might be derelict.

If I could visit just once, bust in a window, I could take more things for barter. Maybe even have a yard sale, if the neighborhood was safe. If no one had already broken in.