We sat in silence as I tried to determine how I wanted to continue—if I wanted to continue. But I figured I had nothing to lose.

“You don’t see how all of this is connected? Liz pushing me into that pit, the grass dying, the landscaping tools attacking Jess . . . you don’t think it’s all part of something?” I kept my voice even, logical, to match his demeanor.

He exhaled slowly. “I can understand why you might think so, but no, I don’t think it’s all related. I think Liz is having a midlife crisis, we have terrible clay soil and a fungal infection sweeping the neighborhood, and the weed whacker was an electrical surge from the ComEd transformer that was blown out on the Fourth of July. I think it’s just a series of strange happenings but not a larger picture. It’s just been a summer of bad luck.”

I wanted to tell him he sounded like the women who don’t realize they’re pregnant until they’re pushing out a baby after a bout of “stomach pain.” At the very least, every single horror movie where they blow off all the signs that they’re being haunted or stalked by a serial killer, until the only one left is the Final Girl.

But instead, I said simply, “I know it’s more than that.”

He nodded and looked like he was going to say something, but we were home. He pulled into our driveway and gave me a kiss on the cheek before we went inside. I was suddenly grateful for my momentary restraint. We ended the evening on a high note, something that was nearly extinct these days. I didn’t want to look like the conspiracy theory meme with the guy standing in front of a wall of paper, looking crazy, pointing out the connections while wildly smoking a cigarette.

After we relieved Mark’s parents, I sat by myself in the kitchen for a long time, thinking about all that had happened. The very real fear of Liz’s slipping away, Emily’s continued strange behavior, and my own feelings of helplessness felt like a weighted blanket around my shoulders, pressing my body down, down until I wanted to curl up on the wood floor.

I put my head on the kitchen island, resting my forehead on the cool granite. I knew I had a choice. I could surrender and stop fighting. We could move away from Whispering Farms and never look back, chalking up the summer to a chapter in our lives that we would never discuss.

Or I could fight. Like I had fought for June, even though it had ended so horribly.

June.

I had surrendered when she died, pushing her to the cobwebbed dark part of my brain. But maybe it was time to finally bring out the dusty memory box.