“I don’t know what to do,” I say to Rob. What can the living say to the dead? Little Girl With Popsicle is gone and we don’t know where. Mommy isn’t really under the sink, and Daddy isn’t in the tool shed.

“Maybe we don’t do anything,” he says.

So I just try to focus really hard on the little girl, and remember that she was here once and she isn’t anymore. Rob’s hand is on my back. I send my best thoughts for her out into the water and the sky and the dry fall leaves and the sand and the pebbles under us. I hold you in my heart, I think at Little Girl With Popsicle, because it feels like someone should.

I take my shoes off, even though it’s raining. Rob does the same. We bury our feet in the damp sand. We watch the lake, where the drops strike circles on the glossy black skin of the water, which grow, move out and out into infinity.

At last Rob says, “It’s really cold.” He is a practical person.

I shake my head. I don’t know what I expected. There’s nothing here.

We walk back toward the car in silence. The path winds downhill, back toward the parking lot. There is something bright on the rain-spattered trail. I bend to pick it up. A long, oval shape, rounded and smooth to the touch. It is green as moss, shot through with veins of white. “Look,” I say, “what a pretty pebble.” I turn to show Rob. As I do the ground suddenly gives way beneath my foot with a graceful slide. Loose earth and stones skid away from my feet and the world is upturned. I fall, striking the earth hard.

Something tears inside me. It is like being killed again. But this time I feel the shockwave, deep and purple and black. Sharp notes are played hard and raw on my nerves. The feeling bursts through, fills each living cell of me.

Rob leans over me, mouth twisted with distress. He says things about the hospital.

“In a minute,” I say. “Let me feel it.” I would laugh, but it hurts too much.

It is the pain that lets him through, I think. The barriers between us are coming down.

I put it in our pocket, he says to me, clear and young.

Little Teddy?

In our POCKET but you THREW it in the TRASH.

I get a hand into my pants pocket. There is blood coming from somewhere. It has made a mess of this shirt.

“What are you doing?” Rob says. Cold gray threads of fear run through his voice. “You’re bleeding.” He takes out his phone.

“Stop.” I am almost yelling at him and that hurts a lot. “Wait!”