“I’m not sure. I don’t even know. I thought I was lost. Jesse, there were so many bodies. Why were they dragged out to a place no one could see? And the man watching them, he had an ax and I saw him—”

The gleam of the blade as it flashed from the sun. His frame leaning over the grass, his gaze steadfast as he brought the ax to the dead flesh. Mira had run before she could witness anything else.

“We have to find where you were,” Jesse resolved when Mira didn’t finish. “You have to show me. Try to remember the path you took. I need to see what you saw.”

Mira agreed, not out of any kind of desire to go back, but because of Jesse’s doggedness. She led Jesse on through the woods.

Neither of them talked as they made their way. As Jesse followed her, she could not stop thinking about how familiar this all felt, except this time she was the one leading him, but what exactly, was she leading him toward? What lay ahead this time, ready and waiting to change their lives?

Mira followed the path as best she could remember. They walked until Jesse began to lag behind. “Okay, Mira,” he said, stopping. “Maybe we should get back.”

“Tired?

“No, it’s just we’ve been going for a while, and if I’m right we’re getting near the river.”

The river. Mr. Loomis. Of course he wouldn’t want to be reminded, but now that they were here she could see they were close.

“It’s not that much farther. Up this way.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” Mira said with a newly found determination. “I remember this. It’s up this hill. Come on.”

They walked up the hill until they got to the clearing where Mira believed she’d been, but when they reached it she saw no men, no digging, and no hole. Mira kneeled. “This was where I was,” she said. Her fingers traced over the markings in the dirt, trying to prove to Jesse they were her prints from earlier. “I crouched here, and over there the men were digging the hole,” she said, pointing to a grassy clearing that existed in the place of the hole. Woodlands encircled the area. What earlier had felt like reprieve from the day’s heat now felt closed in, and she stood up in response.

“This was where you were?” Jesse asked.

“Yes. It was right here. All of it. The ground—a hole was right here. Right where my feet are standing. Right here.”