Later, when she talks to the police she won’t be able to explain it, what made her leave the room, walk behind the motel. She won’t tell them about the man who pointed, how his gestures must have solidified into instruction. She will tell them that she noticed where the grass bent in the wrong direction, where it was flattened. She will tell them about the smell. She squints into the reeds, steps from the asphalt to the edge of the marsh. Insects buzz in her ears, land on her arms, her face. The mud sticks to the bottoms of her shoes, and with each step she needs to break the suction. She has the feeling she is walking toward her own death, that she will be swallowed up, sucked in, and the prospect is more peaceful than scary: At least she won’t have to worry about Gee anymore. She hears the scurry of an animal running through the grass. Her toe grazes something, and she bends to look—a disposable camera. Picking it up, she runs her thumb over the wheel, cranks it, and hits the button on top: a flash blooms in the dark. That bright light will be her last clear memory for days.

The first thing she sees when she pushes through the reeds into the clearing is her daughter’s feet, the soles bare and pale, the toes she used to wash with such awe when she bathed her in the sink. Their perfection and their vulnerability. The way they curled and flexed, the delicate weight of them in her palm. But looking at these feet, these limbs, these palms upturned like they are asking for something, she does not recognize the body as Georgia’s. She wonders, with what will strike her later as the dumb insistence of a record player’s needle stuck in a groove, where this woman with the peach tattooed on her chest got her daughter’s face. She stumbles back through the grass, into the parking lot, into the open door of a room, not caring whose it is. Her knees are about to give out, so she sits on the end of bed.

The scream starts as a pain in her gut that buckles her in two. It roars up through her lungs, rips through the air, horrible and animal. She couldn’t keep Georgia happy, couldn’t keep her home, couldn’t keep her safe. The only thing Deborah can do is force sound from her mouth. She vows she won’t stop screaming until everyone else feels inside of it, inside her voice, inside her pain. She pictures it like thick black smoke coming out of her, filling first this motel room, and then the parking lot, and then the entire city, making it all go dark.

LILY