She shoved a curl out of her face. Her hair was still wet from her shower. Through her mouth, she inhaled and exhaled slowly. I can do this. I only have to write back, give her a little advice, tell her who to contact. I’m making this harder than it has to be. Quickly, before she could change her mind, she scrolled through her messages. She’d skip over the new ones and just take care of Jane’s.

But one of the new emails was Jane’s.

Maggie stared at it, her thumb poised over the girl’s name. “Not again.”

With a groan, she tapped open the email.

Jane Cannon

To: Margaret Arioli

Me again

October 20 at 2:14 AM

I’m exhausted and depressed and will probably regret sending you another email when I get out of bed tomorrow. I don’t even know if you’re receiving these, but if you are, I wish you would write. You’d understand what I’m going through. I keep thinking about what happened, what happened at first and then what happened afterward, like how when I went to the police station to press charges, they put me in a room with two men for questioning. Couldn’t they have found a woman detective to hear me out? It was humiliating. It felt like an interrogation. The one guy wondered if I had a boyfriend, and when I asked him what that had to do with anything, he shrugged and told me that a lot of girls go to parties, drink too much, and make bad decisions. He said, “Then they panic because they don’t want to get in trouble with their boyfriends.” That made me so mad, I just left. Can you believe he said that to me? Can you believe what he was implying? After what I went through 48 hours beforehand? I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t.

Maggie put down the phone with a trembling hand, rose, and crossed to the window overlooking the woods. Her heart was pounding. She could almost hear it pounding.

Stars shone in the trees, like strings of lights. The naked branches formed a frayed canopy that was one shade darker than the sky—a ragged blackness beneath indigo blue. The world from here looked like a far-reaching bruise. She put her hands to her cheeks. They were wet.

When she returned to the floor, she reentered her password, hit REPLY, and wrote:

I’m sorry I didn’t write back sooner, Jane.

She put down the phone and scrubbed her damp palms on her thighs. She picked up the phone again.

I’ve been in rough shape. But I know what you’re going through, and I feel sad for you.

She went back to Jane’s email, reread it, and then, just briefly, squeezed her eyes shut. Gritting her teeth, she made herself continue.