“This was where we used to come. This spot. Here.”

Jesse circled. He peered in the brush, searching, as if any moment he half expected Celine to appear out of her hiding place, but no matter how hard he looked there was no one to find. Mira wondered what other secrets they’d both kept from her.

“I still don’t get why now, out of anywhere else, you’d think she’d be here,” she said.

“I just know.”

“Okay, but, Jesse—how? How do you know?”

“When I moved back, we became friends again.” He paused. “This canal goes all the way to the swamp, but in the other direction, down that way, it connects to the river. The one by the Woodsman property.”

“Okay, and?”

“Celine liked this spot. We took a wrong turn kayaking once and ended up going in the other direction, connecting to the river that led us to the property. We didn’t realize it at the time, thought we were still on the nature reserve land, and left our kayaks on the riverbank to stretch our legs. Celine started walking off ahead of me and I picked up the pace, to catch up to her, but deep in the woods we got separated. I called and called for her, and when I found her again she was in shock. She wouldn’t stop shaking. She told me she saw a group of black men, each of them carrying hatchets in one arm and in the other—they carried decapitated heads.”

Jesse looked out into the trees, appearing unsettled. He lowered his voice to tell Mira the rest of it.

“She said the men didn’t notice her at first. They ran right by, moving in another direction. She froze, watching, and they’d almost passed by without her being noticed, but then one of them turned and looked right at her. She bolted, running until she found me. After she told me the story we both ran out of the woods, found our kayaks, and got out of there.”

The familiarity of Jesse’s story was not lost on her. Did Jesse realize it? Had he noticed the echo from what had happened to the two of them?