I heard a truck coming up the road. I stood up. The truck rounded the corner. It was an SUV with lights on the top—the vehicle I’d seen at the supermarket. Slowly it rumbled by, and the driver nodded to me as it passed. On the back were bright canvas bags—tarps, body bags. There had to be ten or twelve of them, stacked up like fireplace logs. Those bodies were going where I was going: the temple. I’d been there before, with my mother. She loved it. She always said it was a peaceful place, a place where she could think about what was really important to her. Now, I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to be here. I felt so small, so alone.

I looked down at my phone. That was my only lifeline to the real world, to people I knew, people who could help me. I just wished it would ring. I could try to call Tad again. And tell him what? That I didn’t know anything? There was no point. Not now. I had to go.

I made it to the top of the hill and joined the crowd. Most of the people there were locals, but there were lots of foreigners as well, all gathered around the message boards. I joined them in reading the messages. At first I was encouraged. So many people had lived and left behind their words, trying to connect with somebody. But for everybody who had lived there was a message looking for somebody who was lost. Maybe those people had just been separated in the chaos. Or maybe they were dead.

Then I saw the photos of the buried. The first showed a woman, old and gray, her eyes open, the color drained from them, an expression of such fear on her face that it looked as if she could have been scared to death. I felt like a stranger at somebody else’s funeral.

I moved down the board, glancing at photo after photo of people who were dead. Some of the faces looked peaceful, as if they were simply asleep. Others were so bloated or bruised or so bashed in that it was hard even to tell if they were male or female; those I had to look at more closely. Photo by photo I moved down the line, each time praying I wouldn’t see my family, and each time my prayer was answered. The board ended and they weren’t there. That meant that they weren’t buried. I allowed myself to see a small glimmer of hope.

Then I looked up and saw the courtyard in front of the temple. There was row upon row of brightly colored tarps. Bodies.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I stood looking at the courtyard. As I watched, another body was taken from a truck and carried in by four men, one at each corner. They lowered it gently to the ground at the end of one of the rows. Two Buddhist monks, wearing bright orange robes, walked among the bodies. They were chanting and banging on drums.