She stood and led Holden on, through the foliage and onto the road, as if she belonged—which she did—and across to a fallow field, and from there to a footpath. Behind her, somewhere in the dark, José Luis brought the drone back to its starting place and hauled the kayak out of the water, and he’d soon be strapping the watercraft into the back of his thirty-year-old F-150 and returning to his mother’s cinder-block house on the outskirts of town. And in the coming weeks, construction on the last room would be finished, and the exterior would be plastered and painted, and a new pump on the well would go in, and he’d have made his mother proud. This was why it didn’t matter if another year passed before she saw him again, or if she never saw him again.

The kayak would be waiting, as would the drone.

She led Holden a quarter mile northwest, to a well-lit, low-slung farmhouse surrounded by irrigated land. Three well-fed dogs came to greet her, circling, tails wagging, checking out Holden’s legs and shoes, and when the butt sniffing had gone on long enough, she continued around to the back, where a forty-foot fifth wheel was parked on a concrete pad, up against a recently stained deck.

Beside the deck stood a small carport, a five-year-old Fiesta beneath.

She strolled past the car and up to the deck, ran her fingers beneath the handrail, found the key hooked in place—signal that no one had come asking questions—and she unlocked the trailer door, flipped on a light, swept a hand forward in welcome and, speaking the first words in hours, said, “Home, sweet home.”

Holden stepped inside.

She followed him in.

Temperatures in the valley rarely dropped below fifty, even in the heart of winter, and the trailer, having been closed up for the past several months, had a sunbaked, stale-air, mold-tinged taste to it. She powered up the air conditioner.

“Give it a few minutes,” she said. “It’ll clear out pretty fast.”

She reached into a cabinet and pulled out a clean towel, offered it to him. “A little musty,” she said. “Humidity is hard to fight down here.”

Holden took the towel, and his gaze tracked along the interior.

If thought bubbles could appear above a person’s head, his would have read, Cozy, clean, all the necessities of home, but not a home.

Humans were pack rats by nature.

Small, tight spaces were difficult to keep tidy.

The lack of life detritus was a giveaway.

She pointed him toward the bathroom. “Shower’s in there, if you don’t mind cold water. I’ll get the heater pilot light lit soon as I’ve said hi to the parents and let them know it’s me.”

He looked at her funny, but parents wasn’t something she wanted to explain.