Sobbing, I comb the dirt with raking bloody hands, desperate for any other bit of her, any other relic, and I find nothing at all. Nothing but this purse. I curl around its deflated crocodile skin and cry for Mama, for the fact no one followed her, for the fact no one found her. Her final act. Solitude and calm in the forest at the base of Mount Vilox. A tragedy fit for the scale of my mama’s life.

And I feel sure that I will die—die down here with her—that a part of me wouldn’t even be mad about keeping her company, even if my own life story still isn’t long enough to carry the same tragedy without bowing inward on it.

And that’s when I hear a phone sing. Teddy’s satellite phone.

Forever beautiful and fun, under every moon and every sun. She will be there until the end. Your very own Pocket Girlfriend.

The blue light pierces the inside of the cave in a solitary beam, some five feet from where I was.

Mama.

She’s flesh and bone, like I’d wished for so long, but chilled and rotted and wrong—not like the dream of her, at all.

NONI

I lose her hand, even though I swore I would never lose it again. I lose her to those impenetrable woods. What she falls into is stolen from hell: It looks like a pit, a giant gullet, and when she falls into it, I’m calling after her, but it’s like I’m eight years old again, and she’s not hearing me. I scream for her to stay still, but two figures follow her down, and then the floor of the forest is shuddering and dropping, sucking them all down into its damp depths. I shudder back onto my heels, a scream dying in my chest. My lungs feel like they might burst. But I only allow myself seconds of this before I scrabble toward the lawn.

I won’t let her be lost.

I am quick. I remember all the shortcuts. The branches whip my face, scoring me, marking me. I only roll my ankle twice; I can’t even feel it over the burning in my chest. I tear through the foliage toward the property edge. That’s when I see the flashlights of men in uniforms, stamping toward me, when I see police cars and fire trucks pulled up to the gate already. Someone has pushed open the gate and let an ambulance through, too; its light is visible by the dead fountain. Then I see Teddy’s fancy car parked beside another two black cars. I watch as Antella Arnoix shoves through the men arguing among themselves, and I run back into the woods to lead help to my sister. No one will stop me this time.