“I can’t heal you. You’re going to hurt, hurt bad, either way. But I think if you come with me, we can find answers, Jackie. We made it out of the library together. We work well together, for whatever reason. I’m not asking you to . . . I’m just asking . . . I just want us to try.”

She drew her hands together in front of her chest like a person in prayer. Jackie considered this woman, the mother of what could one day be her brother. She thought of what Lucinda said about being a mother, slowly losing a child.

“Put your hands down. I don’t know why you’re doing that, it looks weird. Fine. Yes. I’ll come with you.”

Diane clapped once and hugged her.

“I’ll do my best to help,” said Jackie, “but my best might not be anything at all.”

She pulled herself gently from Diane’s hug and pointed out the window at the bike.

“Neither of us has a car now. So how are we getting there? We gonna take that cute ride of yours, or what?”

Diane frowned.

“No, I don’t suppose.”

Diane considered several options. The obvious was to rent a car, but she was basically out of money. Diane’s only credit card was an American Express Uranium Card, which was a dangerous card to use because it does not allow revolving credit and is made entirely of enriched uranium. Few merchants accept American Express Uranium Cards, or even allow them in their stores, but she did get double mileage points if anyone accepted it and survived.

Diane leaned her head back, exhaling upward, hoping for a solid thump of a thought to fall into her mind. She blinked. She stared up. Nothing.

“Is there anyone whose car we could borrow?” Jackie said.

“Steve would definitely do that. He’s always so helpful and nice. But he’s not been so reliable these da—” A solid thump of a thought. “What about that?”

On one of the highest shelves, there was a Mercedes, only a few years old, and once offered with urgency by a young man wearing a gray pin-striped suit stained with dirt. The luxury sedan was perfectly balanced across the drive train, resting perpendicularly on the ten-foot wooden shelf.

Jackie smiled, and then winced. It hurt to smile. It hurt not emotionally but physically, due to the trauma to her muscles. She had not smiled since the accident.

“Keys are in the ignition,” she said.

“Great,” Diane said but didn’t do anything because: “How are we going to—”

“I don’t know.”

“But how did you in the first place?”

“I don’t remember.”

“So we’re stuck again.”

“Looks like.”