Have faith, Wanderer. We’ll find Uncle Jeb, or he’ll find us.

If he’s still alive, I added, sighing and loping off my simple path into the brush that was identical in every direction. Faith isn’t a familiar concept for me. I don’t know that I buy into it.

Trust, then?

In who? You? I laughed. The hot air baked my throat when I inhaled.

Just think, she said, changing the subject, maybe we’ll see them by tonight.

The yearning belonged to us both; the image of their faces, one man, one child, came from both memories. When I walked faster, I wasn’t sure that I was completely in command of the motion.

It did get hotter—and then hotter, and then hotter still. Sweat plastered my hair to my scalp and made my pale yellow T-shirt cling unpleasantly wherever it touched. In the afternoon, scorching gusts of wind kicked up, blowing sand in my face. The dry air sucked the sweat away, crusted my hair with grit, and fanned my shirt out from my body; it moved as stiffly as cardboard with the dried salt. I kept walking.

I drank water more often than Melanie wanted me to. She begrudged me every mouthful, threatening me that we would want it much more tomorrow. But I’d already given her so much today that I was in no mood to listen. I drank when I was thirsty, which was most of the time.

My legs moved me forward without any thought on my part. The crunching rhythm of my steps was background music, low and tedious.

There was nothing to see; one twisted, brittle shrub looked exactly the same as the next. The empty homogeny lulled me into a sort of daze—I was only really aware of the shape of the mountains’ silhouettes against the pale, bleached sky. I read their outlines every few steps, till I knew them so well I could have drawn them blindfolded.

The view seemed frozen in place. I constantly whipped my head around, searching for the fourth marker—a big dome-shaped peak with a missing piece, a curved absence scooped from its side that Melanie had only shown me this morning—as if the perspective would have changed from my last step. I hoped this last clue was it, because we’d be lucky to get that far. But I had a sense that Melanie was keeping more from me, and our journey’s end was impossibly distant.

I snacked on my granola bars through the afternoon, not realizing until it was too late that I’d finished the last one.

When the sun set, the night descended with the same speed as it had yesterday. Melanie was prepared, already scouting out a place to stop.

Here, she told me. We’ll want to stay as far from the cholla as possible. You toss in your sleep.