I felt my breath quicken and my pulse race, but we’d all agreed that would seem normal. We’d just experienced extreme stress. If my body showed no signs of it, that would be abnormal. I took a deep breath as I realized exactly what we were doing. This wasn’t park rangers anymore, people asking you to stay on the trail and look out for your safety. This was a cop, and I was about to lie to her: ‘John was hiking up ahead to get some photos, and just after I stepped into the clearing …’ I paused to catch my breath, then stared down, as if transfixed by my own feet. ‘I heard him scream. I saw him slip and fall off the edge.’ Still staring down, I pulled everything I’ve ever felt, everyone I’d ever lost, my mom and my dad, Davis and Ellie, as close to me as possible. Then I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and looked up.

‘And when you looked over the ledge, could you see him, ma’am?’

Vera interrupted, ‘No, because it’s a goddamned river. It has to be at least a hundred feet down. We need to get down there, we need to –’ She stopped abruptly, as if she didn’t know what we needed to do.

Officer Parker stepped back, exchanged a whispered word with her partner, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. I imagined them pulling out a polygraph machine right then and there, asking me all sorts of questions, Parker’s once-kind face looking right at me: I think you’re lying, Lucy.

Instead, her eyes flitted to the road, where yet another UTV had pulled in, driven by a ranger, a young guy whose shaggy hair peeked from beneath his cap. Parker turned back to me. ‘Can you take us to where you saw him fall?’

The ride in the UTV was bumpy, air slapping at our faces. The ranger and Officer Parker rode in front, Vera and I in the back, though I kept my eyes focused on the woods and the trail, not daring to glance at Vera for fear that the wrong look would somehow give us away. I pictured John out there, waiting. Could he hear the sirens? The rumble of the UTV over stones and logs and roots? How far had he gone already? Could he really find his way four miles in the dark? Could the rangers have found him? This plan suddenly seemed insane.

And then there was the note, the one now tucked into my pocket. The note I was too afraid to open again and yet desperately wanted to: Please don’t tell Vera.

Our happy new family, our much-needed escape, was starting off with a betrayal.

‘Here,’ Vera said at the clearing, and the UTV abruptly stopped, my knees smashing against the hard plastic seat in front of me.