Subtly I turn us north, where the beach is wide open, bounded only by a rocky black cliff face at the far end, and a small estuary that’s already been dredged. Not that Emily needs to know this. I keep it to myself as we walk side by side, the wind at our backs, gusting in small pushes that feel almost like human hands. The sand courses by, glinting, giving the air a body, one made of glass. My hands are cold and I shove them deep in my pockets.

“Did you know Cameron wanted to do some modeling?” I ask her, deciding to open up a little, to share my thinking, whether or not it’s a good idea.

“What? No. Cameron didn’t even wear makeup. There was nothing girlie about her.”

“Not outwardly, maybe.” I draw out the photo, handing it to her.

She stops midstride, as if she’s seen a snake. “It doesn’t even look like Cameron. When did she do this?”

“At the end of summer, just before school started. I think she was working on a modeling portfolio. She never mentioned her interest at all?”

“I would have said no.”

“Why?”

“Because she would have just gotten her heart broken.”

Getting your heart broken is the privilege of being human, Eden used to say. I didn’t know what she meant then. My heart had been broken lots of times, and I was supposed to say thank you? Now, all these years later, I’m at least starting to see that she was really talking about the whole journey. That it’s impossible to be alive and not get hurt sometimes, not if you’re doing it right.

“She’s so beautiful,” I tell Emily. “She might have had a shot.”

“The world is full of beautiful girls.”

“Even if she had been disappointed, that would have been her choice, right? Part of her figuring it all out.”

She doesn’t answer.

We’re a hundred yards from the lip of the estuary now, a shallow trench of seawater with a foam-pocked shore, a hundred and fifty yards from the tide line. Something in the expanse of flat water catches my eye, a rock levitating or a scuba diver, I think, but really it’s a seal surfacing at the edge of the estuary. We watch as it hoists itself out of the cloudy water, its front flippers, its sleek brown head in profile, nose pointed at the surf. This is where it needs to go, inch by inch—back to the sea. No one can help it get there.

Emily says, “Why are you bringing this up now? What does it have to do with the case?”

“I’m just trying to understand Cameron’s dreams.”

“Why?”