He stopped and shone his cell phone on me. Stark in the light, I fought the urge to cower. “Thank you for saying that. I have no idea why you did, but it means a lot to me.” He was being so earnest, it made me squirm. The two of us never communicated this way. My opinion of him was a veil I wasn’t supposed to lift. I’d pledged allegiance to my sister on the first day of my life. If her boyfriend bothered her, he had to bother me too. That was the unspoken contract of our sisterhood.

But I didn’t want to know only cardboard versions of the Albany kids. I didn’t want to do to them what had been done to me for so many years.

Before I could find a response that both honored Aidy and expressed my appreciation of our ability to look past what we knew of each other, Harrison turned his phone’s light toward himself. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered.

“What’s wrong?”

“Shit,” he said again. “My letter.” He began patting the wet, filthy ground, gagging as his frenzied hands grazed over discarded condom wrappers and various piles of unidentifiable muck.

I stood frozen, observing in horror and fascination. Once it occurred to me that holding myself like a statue would not be the choice of someone who didn’t know where the letter had gone, I crouched down to duck waddle around in pursuit of the paper.

“It’s just,” he started, his voice rising.

“What?”

He didn’t answer. Not on the second time either. By the third time I repeated the question, he managed a squeak that trickled with the possibility of tears. “Marley.” He was nearing the height of hysteria now. “I need that letter. I can’t lose it.” His face folded into a pile of grief. “It’s the only piece of her that’s mine.”

“It’s all right,” I cooed, my heart hammering so hard, its foundation started to crack, breaking into my newfound Harrison soft spot. “We’ll find it. It’s probably back by the first entrance. We’ll keep moving now, then go back and look a little later. Okay?”

“But what if there are more clues in there that I missed?” He made circles around himself like a cat chasing his tail. “What if it had the answer to why she wanted to die?”

I stopped moving.

“Every little piece matters,” he continued. “I didn’t spend enough time reading it. She said we didn’t love her like she asked. I should have memorized what my letter said. How could I lose it?”

Aidy had gotten to him. She’d spread her theory like a contagious disease, and Harrison was infected. As I staggered back, my foot pressed into a piece of paper.

Harrison’s letter.