A long time for this moment? Sherry looked away and settled in her chair, seeing in her mind’s eye the vision as if it had just happened. A tremor took to her bones and she closed her eyes.

“I fell asleep, but then I was wide awake, in another world as bright as day. Exactly like what happened in the box. The first vision I had was two nights ago. I saw Shannon . . .”

“So he’s alive.”

“No. I don’t think so. That’s not why I came. I came about the second vision. The one last night.”

She thought very briefly about the search she and Marisa had made for Shannon yesterday. Marisa had identified the International Liaison for Missing Persons as their starting point for finding records on the Richtersons’ deaths. The agency had sent them on a goose chase that had ended three hours later, on the phone with a public relations officer named Sally Blitchner. Sherry learned for the first time that, yes, there was a record of the Richtersons in Venezuela. Then she gave her a number for a man in Denmark.

The man had a heavy accent. Yes, of course he knew the Richtersons, he’d announced over the line. After all, he was a Richterson. The eighty-year-old man claimed his nephew had gone to the States twenty years earlier with his wife and son, Shannon. Then he’d decided that America was no longer a free country and he’d gone into the jungles of Venezuela, to grow coffee. Yes, that had been tragic, hadn’t it? Should never have gone in the first place, the man said. And no, he had not heard of any living relative. They had all died. There were no survivors.

The words settled in her mind with welcomed finality. There were no survivors. So. Shannon hadn’t survived. She’d known that all along and yet her bubble of hope had popped and her heart had dropped to her gut.

“Sherry . . .”

Sherry opened her eyes to see Helen resting, her head leaned back, eyes staring at the ceiling. Sherry took a deep breath and let the vision flood her mind.

“It was what happened last night that . . . scared me. It’s not like real sleep— even though I’m asleep. I’m on a long white beach between the towering trees and the ocean’s blue waters.” She felt the pressure of panic rise through her throat at the vivid image, and she closed her eyes. “It’s just me, standing on this long wide white beach.”

She stopped.

“Please go on,” Helen encouraged.

“I can actually feel the sand with my hands.” Sherry lifted her right hand and rubbed her fingers together. “I could swear I was really there, smelling the salty breeze, hearing sea gulls cry overhead and the waves splashing every few seconds. It was incredible. And then I see this man walking toward me, over the water. On the water, like he was Jesus in that one story. Only I know he’s not Jesus because he’s dressed in black, with jet-black hair to his shoulders. And his eyes glow red.” Sherry breathed deliberately now, feeling her pulse build momentum.