I went back into the room, even though I didn’t want to see her like that. When the police came, I decided, I would tell them about the others. I didn’t know how I would explain. I just knew they were close. Closer than ever before. But now the women were silent. I didn’t have any visions, didn’t hear anything other than the shush of the reeds.

A siren grew closer. I saw a shadow on the floor. I braced myself to see whoever had done this, but it was just the woman, the one from before. She was unsteady on her feet, and I wondered if I’d been wrong about her—there was a stunned look on her face. Maybe she was here for the same reasons as everyone else. She sat on the bed, folded herself in half, and let out a scream that I felt in my spine.

DEBORAH

GEORGIA’S MOTHER STOPS ONCE FOR coffee, hardly notices that it’s too hot to drink until after she’s finished it, when the skin peels away from the roof of her mouth and clumps on her tongue. She gets pulled over just outside Philadelphia for speeding, going eighty in a sixty-five. She accepts the ticket without a word and continues on her way. She loops around the statue in honor of Benjamin Franklin. Georgia always liked that one—history and science broken down into their core elements: the violent zigzag of the lightning, the kite, the key.

Finally she smells the ocean’s cool brackishness through the dark as she crosses through the toll plaza on the way into town. Above her, billboards show women in black lingerie, holding fans of cards with long, red nails. That’s the problem—men are always promised this, no matter who they are. Her daughter lost her virginity at fourteen, bragged about it during one of their fights. But what Gee didn’t realize was that Deborah understood, that she could be objective. What’s a woman to do other than give away what the world will snatch at, always try to take.

The city looks meager and skimpy, like the backdrop of a play that’s only painted part of the way. Why here, Gee? she wonders. Was there nowhere else you wanted to go? She shudders. The morning is mild, but she can’t seem to get warm. Georgia’s instructions: Ask for Peaches. That’s not the name of a real person, of a whole person. Not the name of her girl.