“A mother shouldn’t be able to forget her child’s voice.” She raised her head. Her expression was tired. Grief had aged her in a way that time could never. “You told me, when I called that first time, you knew loss. What was their name again?”

Larkin set down his own cup, swallowed roughly, said, “Patrick.”

“That’s right….” Camila nodded slowly. “Have you forgotten Patrick’s voice?”

—“No, no, no, please! Don’t—!” His ear-piercing scream abruptly silenced, like Patrick had been swallowed by a vacuum.

Thunder boomed overhead.

Heavy-soled shoes squished in the thick mud.

And then Everett Larkin heard his own skull crack.—

Larkin rocked back in his seat, the memory so violent, it was like he’d been struck in the head all over again. The stunned reaction quickly gave way to panic, animalistic fear, the instinctive necessity to protect his face, his head, because Larkin couldn’t—he just couldn’t—survive the pain of a crushed skull a second time. His eyes stung and he was barely able to speak around the sickening rush of unwanted adrenaline. “May I use your bathroom?”

Camila saw the memories play out. There was no way she could have missed them. She pointed down the hall and said, “First door on the right.”

Larkin stood, took long, quick strides out of the room, pushed the door open, and closed it too loudly behind him. His vision was black around the edges, like he wasn’t getting any air. He knocked something from the counter as he hastily turned on the cold water, cupped it in his hands, and splashed his face. A second time. Third. Then he drank a mouthful and spit it out, because he could taste blood and mud on the back of his throat.

Larkin blindly turned the faucet off before hunching over even farther, forearms resting on the sink as his knees shook like Jell-O in an earthquake. His hot exhales bounced off the shallow bowl of the sink and hit him in the face. He couldn’t excuse himself to go retrieve the Xanax from the Audi. Not only was Larkin certain he wouldn’t make the short walk, but he’d already disrupted the moment between them too much. He needed positive associations in order to collect himself. His Rolodex spun haphazardly, and it felt as if the mental cards were spilling every which way.

Another deeper breath.

May 20, 2007, Larkin had finished college with a double major in psychology and criminology. It wasn’t without a healthy dose of irony that Dr. Katz of Larkin’s Advanced Cognitive Neuroscience Theories course couldn’t understand his perfect score and so had concluded that Larkin must have been cheating. Larkin had successfully disputed the claim before the chair of the department and graduated summa cum laude.