“Bad news?” Lottie asks, and I give her Rian’s postcard to read. Lottie doesn’t send or receive mail, and, in our ten years at Keziah, not once has the Elephant called her up to the mailbag. She grins at the photo of the topless girl on the cover and flips over to Rian’s words.

“Your brother is worried about you,” she says. “It’s nice.”

“Still nothing from Mother,” I point out. “Father came and Mother cried, and I’m not sure what it means.”

“Let’s walk.” Lottie pulls me in the direction of the chapel and steers me away from my own thoughts. I let her. Since the mistake with the first letter, Lottie has taken care of me. When I might have sulked or bitten my nails, we walk to the cattle grids, the woodworking shed, and the curtain of burned trees that stand behind the school shop, black and stark against the sky. We avoid the river and the far hills, afraid to test our luck.

Sunlight falls across the graveyard and makes the granite in the headstones shine. I lean my arms on the smooth wood fence that separates the cemetery from the main road and rest my head on my arms, something I could never imagine doing at the beginning of term. The dead scare me less now.

“I’m glad Darnell isn’t buried here,” Lottie says. “He’d make mischief for sure.”

“And who would blame him?” I say. “Being this close to the chapel for eternity would send anyone cuckoo.”

“Darnell is better off lying next to his mother with a view of the mountains,” she says. And, though she’s careful to avoid mentioning his name, I know that Bosman looms large in her imagination, the evil white man who broke Darnell’s neck.

I’ve pointed out the lack of evidence and thrown in terms from articles that I’ve read in Mother’s racy gossip magazines: eyewitness accounts, lack of probable cause, and false accusation all have the power to sway a judge in the negative . . . especially in divorce cases, where shady motel rooms and dark alleyways are common, though I’m sure the same rules of evidence apply to murders.

“Darnell probably did die by accident,” Lottie says with a hitch in her voice. We’ve gone over the dozen ways that Darnell might have fallen, by fair means and foul, and come by slow circles to the same conclusion every time: we will never know what happened or why. We stand before the great mystery that is everything in this world and fumble for answers.

“Why did God take Darnell and my father instead of Bosman or any of the other terrible people in the world? It’s not fair,” she says. “There are so many to choose from!”

“You’re right,” I agree. “It’s not fair.”