Isaac holds up an arm, maybe in greeting or maybe to shield himself from the heavy block of wind thrown by the rotor blades. He opens the cargo door and waves them forward, so they unbuckle and climb out and shout their greetings as the engine winds down. He says, “I have something rather extraordinary to show you.”

Twenty minutes later, after they sign forms they’re too rushed to read, after they’re escorted through a labyrinth of windowless corridors broken up by security locks, they arrive in a room that functions like an observation deck. A bank of computers, a stack of surveillance screens, an intercom, a picture window that offers a view of a dimly lit laboratory.

Two guards wait for them here. They wear fatigues under Kevlar. Assault rifles are strapped across their shoulders but held before them at a downward angle; their fingers are straightened off the triggers yet ready to fire at a moment’s notice. A woman with a rigid spray of hair rises from a roller chair and says, “Oh, wonderful. I’m so glad you decided to come.” Her bright red smile is split by some of the whitest, squarest teeth Jack has ever seen.

He barely hears her introduce herself. He barely notices her manicured hand, held out to shake. Because his eyes are on the window, where Mia Abernathy is spelled out in black, messy, mold-spotted letters.

“Where is she?” he says, pushing forward. “Let us see her. Please.”

Nora is beside him, studying the name of her daughter, tracing the lines of it with her finger. Then they both peer through the glass, squinting into the dusky space and trying to understand what they see.

Then Isaac lifts the dimmer switch and the lab is flooded with light.

There is a tree that grows in the far north. A Norway spruce called Old Tjikko. The tree above the ground might be a hundred years old, while the roots below are nearly ten thousand years old. It lives. It rots. It falls. A new trunk grows again from the same well. That’s all Jack can think of right now. Old Tjikko and its cycle of death and rebirth. Not simply with regard to his daughter, but with regard to them. As a family. They fell, and now—somehow, impossibly—they have twined together and risen once more.

She is there. Wearing a surgical smock. Standing in the middle of the lab. Staring directly at them. She is older, taller, broader in face and shoulder, but unmistakably their daughter.

“Mia,” he says.

19