I took a step beyond the curtain, and the smell of Junie smacked me in the face. The scent I’d been searching for when I’d kissed her in the morgue. Her hair, her skin, the mint gum she always chewed, the grapefruit bodywash she loved. A small, choked sound escaped me, and I covered my mouth with one hand, trying to hold it in. The sudden surge of pain was so huge, so monumental, that I feared expelling it would rip my insides out, lungs and heart and stomach gushing out of me, a bloody pile of organs left on the floor. But my hand was no match for my grief, and the bed rose up to greet me as I fell, burying my face in her pillow to muffle my screams.

I don’t know how long I thrashed on her bed, slamming my face into the mattress and scratching at my own skin. Trying to get away from the anguish that had burrowed into the marrow of my bones. Go ahead and give it your best shot, the pain said. I’ll be here waiting when you give up. And eventually, I did. My sobs winding down like a toy with a dying battery, my body limp and spent, hair sweat-plastered to my skull. The pain was still there, just as it had promised. But I could carry it now. For a little while, at least. And that was something.

I rolled over, stared through tear-swollen lids at the constellation stickers plastered to Junie’s ceiling. Probably every second kid in America had a set, but we’d both been enthralled by them, as if they were rare gems instead of a random Dollar General find. Spent long minutes lying here side by side at night, heads touching on her pillow, watching the planets glow.

“Hey, Junie,” I said. “Are you up there?” I hoped she was. Hoped my girl was flying, somewhere beyond the stars.

The day stretched out before me, empty and pointless. I could go to the diner, but I knew Thomas would march my ass straight back out again. I had to wait a few more days before I could plead my case and beg to go back to work. You find him, my mama’s voice hissed inside my head. But I had no idea how. I’d talked to Jimmy Ray and gotten exactly nowhere. And I’d only thought of him because Land had mentioned him first. I wasn’t a detective. I wasn’t even a cop. I was a thirty-year-old with a high school diploma, a dead daughter, and not much else. Well, then you might as well say, “Fuck it.” Let the bastard get away. ’Cause ain’t nobody gonna give a shit about who killed Junie except you. Not really. My mama’s voice again. And true words, even though she’d never actually spoken them. Well, not exactly true. Cal cared. Almost as much as I did, I suspected. But he was hampered by his status as a cop. Everyone knew him, same as they did me, but he was on the other side of the law now. He might have been the Cal they fished with as kids or stole beers with as teenagers. But he was Cal the cop now, and that changed things. That was a shift you didn’t come back from, not around here. People liked him fine, but they weren’t ever going to tell him their secrets.