There are different stages of grieving. Immediate denial gives way to a brain-blackening choke hold that lasts for years . . . which gives way to occasional bouts of teary paralysis . . . which gives way to the next phase and the next phase and the next phase. It never ends. You never get past it. A lost child is a bottomless hole.

He hates this hope. He absolutely hates it. Because when the girl in the window or down the cereal aisle turned out to be someone else, a phantom, Mia was taken from him again and again and again.

So he doesn’t want to believe. He can’t believe. He won’t believe.

On the helicopter, he and Nora don’t talk. Words feel unattainable right now, as do the many questions prickling their minds. They are buckled onto a bench seat, side by side, and before they had even taken off, Nora grabbed his hand. Her grip is so tight that his skin whitens and his tendons ache. The roar of the engine might as well be the blood in his ears. The rhythmic shiver of the rotor might as well be the breath in his lungs. Have they been flying now for three minutes or three days? He’s lost track.

The clouds hang low and the chopper skims across the pulpy gray top of them. The rotor wash churns their surface, forming a gray whirlpool when they suddenly descend. Jack has lost his sense of direction and is surprised to see the ocean open up beneath them. Whitecaps froth. Rain spits. The wind knocks the chopper around, and the pilot corrects their course. An island looms. Spires of black rock surround the tree-studded hump. There seems to be nowhere to land, so when the chopper lowers further, he wonders for a panicked moment if they’re going to crash, if this is an emergency landing. He isn’t worried for himself. Instead, he fears, after all this time, that he will never see her, that the wish of his quarter will never come true.

Then the chopper tilts forward in a steep decline, and he sees through the cockpit window the arrangement of concrete buildings below. Their squares and rectangles are half sunk into the black rock and green grass, tucked among the island’s natural features.

The helicopter pad is on a roof, and as soon as the landing skids touch down, a door to the building opens and a man steps out into the rain. He wears a black rain jacket and rain-spotted khakis and looks the definition of ordinary. Like someone who should be fertilizing his lawn in the suburbs or selling data plans at Verizon. It takes Jack a moment to recognize him as the man from the other day. The man who apologetically blocked his way on the logging road in the Olympics.