A dream tugs me under, strange images rising thick and moist, like the breath of an animal. I’m in a roundhouse, partially underground, a structure like the Pomo once built for rituals and ceremonies. Some sort of purification rite is taking place around me, elders in deerskin capes and robes, their chests bare, chanting with everything they’re made of. As if they’re singing through the pores of their skin.

I can smell burning sage. Gray smoke climbs the earthen walls and widens upward like a spell.

“Where does it hurt?” I hear a familiar voice ask me.

Everywhere, my mind answers.

It’s Hap. I can’t see him through the smoke but recognize the solid, spreading warmth of his skin and his smell, which has always been exactly like this, the scent of trees becoming wise.

I can’t do this, I tell him with my mind, meaning solve the case, unpuzzle the clues, find Cameron. But suddenly I mean everything. My whole life—heavy with loss. Jason and Amy. My mother in that awful parking lot, dead on Christmas Day. Jenny’s murder and Eden’s cancer. Hap’s disappearance. My daughter’s accident. The dark abyss of my work and how it connects in an awful and yawning way to everything else.

“It’s okay.” Hap speaks into my ear. “It was all a long time ago.”

No. I feel small and powerless beside him, as if I’m ten again. Twelve. Eight. Sixteen. All the ages I’ve ever been. There’s a sound like a ringing phone coming through the wet smoke around us, but it’s too far away, and I can’t reach it. Where did you go, Hap? I wish you could have said goodbye.

“Life is change, Anna. We don’t get to keep each other.”

I let you down. I’m not who you think I am.

“Hush.”

I have to tell you what happened. What I’ve done.

“Be still, honey. It doesn’t matter now.”

But it does. Help me, Hap. I can’t live like this, I plead as the dream spins on.

The elders are turned away from us, drumming over hot stones. The roundhouse seems to be breathing like a lung, taking in grief and letting it go.

Hap says, “I’m so sorry, honey. I know it hurts, but we never have to do anything alone. I’ve never left your side. Come look at what I brought you.”

I gaze up and the roof has disappeared. The sky is dazzling and boundless, sparks flickering on and off and on again.

“We can’t always see them,” Hap says, meaning the stars, “but they’re always with us, sweetie. Don’t give up.”

Help me move on, Hap. I need to find Cameron.

“You’ve already found her, Anna. See? She’s been here the whole time.”

(sixty)