When he squeezed her throat, she was surprised by the strength left in them, the power of his grip. She kicked and flailed, but she couldn’t reach him. Her vision swam; she couldn’t hear the lake anymore, or her husband and her son splashing in the dark, or the crickets in the trees. She couldn’t hear anything except his inhales against her ear and the roar of her own valorous, foolhardy heart.

That was, until she saw Sarah.

She stood there above them both, so beautiful, as only a memory could be. But she was something else, something they had in common that Lily had never let herself notice before. She could see it now, as Sarah raised her hands above her head.

She was scared.

Suddenly, there was a crack, and Gavin collapsed on top of her, as he had countless times before, his lips against her hair as they made their motel promises.

Only this time, he stayed down.

When Lily had managed to free herself from under him, she lay on her back, heaving. Ruth was in a heap on her father, her white towel heavy with blood, the rock from the firepit still clutched in her grip. Lily hacked and coughed and clawed the ground, but when she could finally breathe, the air was there, ready for her.

PEYOTE

BY THE TIME SILAS called for me, it was too late.

I arrived in the clearing, where the night covered the sight but not the smell of blood. I saw Gavin first, facedown in the dirt, and froze the whole scene immediately. Next to him was Ruth. Or at least she looked like Ruth, if Ruth had been hung up and drained like livestock. Even her hair seemed colorless as she sat on the forest floor, blood all over her towel, running down her wrists from her hands and the rock they clutched.

As I knelt down in front of her, I wondered if Cal would recognize the look on her face. If it was like in the barracks, where her choices—despite how they felt at the time—weren’t really her own, or more like slipping through that chain-link fence at the Farm, after she threw the grenade into the schoolhouse. In short, I wondered if Cal would be able to tell how far gone her young soul was. How much of Ruth was already ours.

I pushed a piece of hair back from her cheek and found myself hoping that we wouldn’t get it all.

Lily held Sean, who was frozen half within her grasp and also half reaching. Reaching, of course, for Mickey, who was spread out on the dirt near the water.