“Do you have to go to school for it?”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “It’s more common now than it was before, but there’s no real training for journalism.”

“Criminal record?”

“Also not a problem. If you like telling stories, that’s the most important thing—the only thing, really.”

She said, “I think there are a lot of stories here in Manatee.”

“Is there a newspaper?”

She shrugged.

I wrote out my e-mail and reminded her she had my number. “If you’re interested, stay in touch. I can give you advice on how to get started.”

Tori thanked me with some embarrassment, as if I couldn’t mean it.

“Seriously,” I said. “Don’t be afraid to ask, just reach out.”

She balled up her garbage. The hour was almost over.

“So you found Zeke,” she said at last.

“Yeah.”

“What does that mean for Jules?”

“It means she’s dead.”

“It was the people in the truck.”

“Yeah.”

I saw she was gripping the edge of the picnic table, driving half moons in the wood with her nails.

“People like us,” she said, “they think we’re just, I don’t know, only physical.”

I nodded.

“They take us away, they put us wherever they want—”

Her rage gave in to hard, dry sobs. I came around to her side of the table, unsure of what to do. My conscious thought was to pat her lightly—“It’s okay,” I tried. It didn’t help. I slid closer, our bodies touched. Then it felt like my hands were acting on their own, remembering lost gestures, as I gently cupped her head. It tilted easily to my shoulder.

I don’t know how long we sat like that, pulses identical, before the parking lot lights shuddered on, insects thronging to the glow.

8.

On my way back to the motel, I passed through Retreat one last time. The houses of the Glades were shining, the south side all subdued, and Bougainvillea Ravine awaited tomorrow’s excavation. I imagined ashes beneath foundations, teeth loose in the garden, fragments of skull in the seashell walks. Jules, Zeke, all the doctored numbers in the report—no one will ever find them, I thought. Time is bearing them away. But the tapes in my recorder, the notes in my book, the photos in my purse—the story could be told.

Back in my room, I sat at the desk, nothing but the lamp switched on. Beyond the open window, the sound of cicadas fizzled out like sparks. I opened the envelope, withdrew the photos. I can still recall how the world dropped away and everything in the image went sharp.

Can you bear witness to a photograph? I knew exactly how that bathroom felt, hot and close, condensation clinging to the tile, and I fell into the scene, seeing Zeke through Lourdes’s eyes.