She collected pieces of scattered metal shorn to the ground like scrapped limbs of baby dolls. She’d had baby dolls once, and a nanny. Her father had worked on the military compound up on the hill, his mission secret. Even Mara had felt undercover. Her mother did not work, but she’d managed to convince the Los Alamos committee she needed domestic help anyway. There were rules about who could receive help and who couldn’t, but pregnancy and illness moved a mother to the top of the list, so her mother often stayed in bed until noon while Chaiwa, a housekeeper from the San Ildefonso Pueblo, came to care for Mara, who’d listen each morning for the sound of moccasins shuffling against concrete. A wake-up song. The furnace in their small apartment overheated, so they’d crack open the windows at night, even when it snowed. Chaiwa would turn off the furnace. Her mother and the other mothers on base called Chaiwa a girl, though she wasn’t a teenager like the rest who came over from the Indian high school, but a much older woman, grandmotherly really, though she didn’t have kids. She sang to Mara in Tewa.

Mother didn’t like Chaiwa. But Mara loved her. She loved Chaiwa’s long black hair, shining with singular strands of silver as dragonfly wings, whispering a melody Mara couldn’t understand but couldn’t shake. Chaiwa had taught her about Lizard’s Tail—about the strength and cunning that a person needed to utilize its secret escape hatch, as Chaiwa had. Mara needed Lizard’s Tail now, though she couldn’t yet tell why. Chaiwa felt close. Like she’d never left.

Mara checked Trudy’s house, a sprawling cabin with high-beamed ceilings. Nothing seemed amiss. The usual clutter—the disarray of clean laundry folded but left out, bills, flyers, and magazines strewn across couch cushions and coffee tables, chopped wood shrouding the entire mantle and floor around the brick, tools, gardening supplies, knickknacks and books. The house smelled of coffee beans and rich, nutty oak. The cast-iron fireplace, unused since winter, still released the scent of burning paper curled at the edges. Georgia O’Keeffe paintings colored the walls, bone desert and bright flowers. Why was Trudy’s truck gone? She usually checked with Mara before she went into town to see if Mara needed anything or wanted to tag along. They didn’t make the twenty-mile trip more than a couple times a week; it was nice to go together. Was Trudy checking on her son at the hospital? It was unlike Trudy not to tell Mara. She would wait for her at the ranch a few minutes before setting out to town. In the meantime, she’d check on Trudy’s father, Loren, who lived in the smaller cabin up the hill, near the water tank.