“I know,” Ayanna said. She knew on some level that this was a responsibility she had now. They were no longer family, but they had love in common. Ayanna was old enough now to know there were no strong arguments to be made around fairness. Life was fundamentally unfair. People were doomed to continually replicate in ideas and systems and attitudes an intrinsic unfairness learned from being a part of nature. Yet she couldn’t help but think, This is monumentally stupid and unfair.

The security guard waved a key card and opened the door. They stepped in together. Opal was lying in the dirt, seemingly out of energy. Ayanna and the man approached her. The music was louder here. She could feel the vibrations of it coming up from the soil.

“I can hear Ruby’s voice,” he said. “She’s calling to me.” He took a scared step back.

Ayanna ignored him, offered her mom a hand. She turned over. Her leg was swollen. Ayanna handed her some water, pulled a bag of beef jerky out of her bag. It took all her willpower not to tell Opal how to behave, to tell her how much trouble she was in, to lay into her about her drinking, to say something harsh still about Olivia’s memorial service. It was all there and waiting to be said. Instead, Ayanna sat next to her on the ground and said, “This isn’t where Olivia went. It was a meadow. Long blue grass, blue sky, silver mountains. We were both thrilled by how beautiful it was.”

Opal opened the bag of jerky. She pulled a piece out and chewed it contemplatively.

“I can’t stop you from going through. I definitely can’t stop you from getting arrested. This is probably trespassing. You assaulted a security guard.”

Her mother continued eating the jerky.

“There’s the barn where I spent so much time when I was growing up. I used to sit here with Dad in the summer and fall. We would pray somehow that these doors would make the world a better place, that they would end suffering. Oh man, I wanted to believe that so bad.”

“Badly,” Opal said. She reached for her purse, dug around, took out a small shooter of vodka, and downed it. Ayanna handed her the water bottle again. She waited for the security guard to do something, but he had gone back to the gate. Opal dug in her purse again, pulled out a cell phone, and looked at it. Ayanna knew they were close enough that phones no longer worked.

“What do you want from this?”

“I’m going to wait here until the door opens back to the meadow you described. I am going to go through and get Olivia back.”

“You could die.”

“I don’t care.”

“She’s dead. You’ll be doing it for nothing.” Ayanna could hear how uncertain she sounded. They were here for the same reason.