“The men chasing you—” Mira said, but Jesse stared at her blankly. “They fired shots. You didn’t hear them? You didn’t see?” Jesse’s silence answered her question. “You haven’t seen any of it, have you?” she asked, and Jesse turned away, unable to look her in the face.

“I thought I did,” Jesse confessed. “You were so sure that I believed you, and then with the mob I got so scared at the thought it was happening again—that I’d be blamed again, but no. I never saw anything. Or, I don’t think I did, but it doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand why I couldn’t see any of it and you could.”

“You said we all had to reckon with our past. I had to too.”

Mira pieced together the story of what had been shown to her. The Woodsmans and all the horrors done to his slaves. The night of the failed revolt. The mob of men, ones she’d mistakenly thought were after Jesse, had been hunting the slaves who escaped. They’d given up their search out of the fear of what may have happened to one of their own.

Mira looked in the direction from where Jimmy disappeared, out toward the river. The men had not wanted to follow him there. The river held one final piece that she needed to know. She got up from the ground, wiped the dirt off the front of her jeans. “It’s not over. We still need to get to the river,” she said, and Jesse nodded.

They hiked in the direction of the sound of the rustling water. Mira made her breath as sparse as she could, worried that if she exhaled too hard she’d disrupt whatever vision the ghosts might have wanted to show her. She led the way, Jesse not far behind her, each of them cautious of their steps as they walked through the woods.

“I think I hear it,” she said after they’d gone about another mile. Jesse was silent, listening. The sound of the river was there, slightly hidden among the chorus of other inhabitants of the woods—the crickets’ chirps, the movement of deer or raccoons as their bodies snuck through the brush—but underneath was the rustling of water as it flowed, making its way east toward the swamps.

With the rise of dawn approaching, they continued along, Mira hurrying in the hope of getting there before light, and after walking a few more feet they came upon it. “We made it,” Jesse said once they’d reached the edge of the riverbank.