“What? What about it?” But St. Ignace is in the Upper Peninsula. Where Malorie is from. And the city name, coming from Olympia’s lips, coupled with the word survivors, suggests something Malorie is not prepared to hear.

“Your parents’ names are on the list, Mom. Their names are on the list of survivors. Your parents are alive.”

FOUR

Malorie can’t sit still in what was once the lodge’s main office. The desk still harbors some of the items the long-ago director used daily. A magnetized rectangle for paper clips. A yellow pad for notes. A calendar seventeen years old. There was once a two-way mirror in here, so the campers couldn’t see the director observing them eating below in the common area. But that mirror has long been tucked beneath Tom’s bed, materials for proposed inventions Malorie won’t let him build, and a black cloth hangs in the open space instead.

She refuses to believe the news. Even the possibility of it. Then she believes it. Then she refuses. Believes it again. She’s seen the names with her own eyes now. Sam and Mary Walsh. Common names, she tells herself. So many Sams. Even more Marys. And Walsh…

But the exact combination, and the fact that they are listed in the Upper Peninsula, is actually hurting her. It’s a variety of pain, in her stomach, her bones, her heart, she’s never known before. Seventeen years ago Shannon accompanied Malorie to buy a pregnancy test. The world had already changed irrevocably by then, but the sisters didn’t know it yet. The last time Malorie spoke to her parents, she told them of the baby. Then Sam and Mary Walsh stopped answering their phone.

Seventeen years.

Tom and Olympia know to leave her alone with this. They are in what used to be the secretary’s office, the outer office, as Malorie sits, then stands, then sits, in here, the pages spread before her on the desk. The door is shut. She swept the room before removing her fold.

She reads the names again.

“How?”

Even this word hurts. She should be moving. North. Toward them. This is every griever’s fantasy, to see Mom and Dad once more. To say the things she never said.

She should leave. Now.

But…is this real?

And how old is this list? How many years gone? The pages suggest the man who claimed to be from the census traveled most of the Midwest. And how long has that taken? Is such a thing even possible? And is this his first visit to Michigan? Or did he note these names, the names of Malorie’s parents, a decade ago?

Oh, she should’ve let him in.