Even burned to ash, I can recite every word of the letter, picture each determined arch of the script. Whether I ran from the mob (my latest theory, given the almost alarming amount of cash I brought with me to Maine) or stole drug money from that abusive boyfriend, I was resolute by the time I wrote it. And though I remember only unhelpful details—that I grew up in a yellow house and had a high school friend who lost his finger in a tubing accident—I know for sure I was no idiot.

Your life depends on it. Others’ lives depend on it.

So this is what it is to be dead: afternoon breakfast of cold cuts and a banana. Maintenance on the composting commode. Boat to shore to take in the trash. Head an hour out of town to purchase three boxes of hair color and cheap shades. Drive back to town to the local fly shop for supplies. Return to cabin, dump everything on kitchen table. Dye roots so the scrubby patch looks far less conspicuous. Eat dinner in front of the first season of Roswell because it’s the only DVD set in the cabin’s library I haven’t seen yet.

Work at the table until dawn.

All this time, the letter is running in an endless loop through my head.

*  *  *

Two days later, I am out of cold cuts and sick of bananas. I need to make a run to the Fly Shop and pick up gas for the boat.

I grab my bank card and driver’s license and then pause. Who is that girl in the picture? Is she a victim? A criminal? I try to see her in each light. I can’t. But what else is there, when you’re living a false identity?

I flip the license over. It was issued in Maine, though I know for a fact the Center I woke up in is in Indiana. My identity might be fake, but the license itself is not, despite the suspiciously good photo. I wonder for the fiftieth time if I’m in a witness protection program. And for the forty-ninth time, I hope to God if I am that I’m living far enough away from whatever it was I witnessed.

Trust your decision, Clare said more than once to me. But it was so much easier to find peace in that mantra when she was here.

In town, I drive slowly by the small public library. I tell myself I should see if they have a DVD collection. But I’m really thinking about the computers inside. It’d be an easy enough search to look for a fatal car accident earlier this month.

An easy trace, too.

Don’t go digging.

I stop instead at Citgo to fill the Bronco and the boat’s plastic gas tank before heading to the Fly Shop.