They found Mommy’s yellow cassette tape in the sister’s house. It had her notes on Little Girl With Popsicle. The possum detective says it sounds like she was already dead when Mommy got her. Still, I can’t think about it.

I’m sure Mommy mistook the Little Girl for a boy. Mommy never messed with girls. So Mommy took her because of all those chances coming together. A haircut, a trip to the lake, a wrong turn. It makes my heart hurt and that feeling will never go away, I don’t think. Like a cut that never heals.

The possum detective and I are drinking sodas in my back yard. Our fingers ache after yanking out so many nails. Plywood lies in broken stacks all around us. The house is so strange with its windows uncovered. I keep expecting it to blink. It’s still warm in the sunshine, but cold in the shade. The leaves are thick on the ground, red and orange and brown, all the shades of Rob’s hair. Soon it will be winter. I love winter.

I like the possum detective but I’m not ready to let her in the house. Other people’s eyes make it a place I don’t recognize. She seems to understand that.

“Do you know where your mother is?” The possum detective asks the question suddenly, in the middle of another conversation about sea otters (she actually knows a fair amount about them). I smile because I can see that she is enjoying the conversation about sea otters, but also using it to be a detective and try to surprise me into telling her the truth. I like it; that she’s so good at her job. “Should I still be looking for her?” she says. “You have to tell me, Ted.”

I think about what to say. She waits, watching.

I don’t know much about the world but I know what would happen if they find the bones. The excavation, the pictures in the newspaper, the TV. Mommy, resurrected. Kids will go to the waterfall at night to scare each other, they’ll tell stories of the murder nurse. Mommy will remain a god.

No. She has to really die this time. And that means be forgotten.

“She’s gone,” I say. “She’s dead. I promise. That’s all.”

The possum woman looks at me for a long time. “Well then,” she says. “We never had this talk.”

I walk the possum detective to her car. As I’m going back to the house, I notice that the last “s” on the street sign is wearing away. If you squint it might not be there at all. Needles Street. I shiver and go inside quickly.