Anna gave her the damp flannel shirt with about the same amount of reluctance with which Leah accepted it. They jogged along the side of the mountain, skirting heavy undergrowth where they found it.

“I don’t really remember him,” Leah said suddenly, her voice tight. “I remember I had a child named Alexander. I remember we weren’t able to get him out, and that he wasn’t there when the rest of the children were killed. I don’t remember any more.”

And that was only partly a lie. Anna wasn’t going to call her on it. “What made you come here?” she asked, hoping it was an easier thing for Leah to talk about.

Leah said, “I dreamed. The night before I left Bran to come here. Buffalo Singer, Charles’s uncle, told me that the time had come to finish my battle. I didn’t know what he meant, not until … I heard the Singer’s call again. And I decided that I would go to the Singer after all. I expected a battle, I think. I did not expect Alexander.”

She sounded … broken. Voice hoarse, she continued as if the words were being forced out of her mouth. “I didn’t tell Zander that I don’t remember why we left him, did I? I told him, told my son, what I thought would make him angry enough to raise that gun so that I could make myself kill him before the Singer came after us in his stead.” She paused. “I wonder why he did not come?”

Anna did not regret Zander’s death. But she was very glad it had been her who had killed him and not Leah. The other woman would have done it, but Anna thought that Leah was going to leave this place with enough battle scars. She didn’t need to add killing her son to the list.

Anna groped for something she could say.

Don’t feel bad; he was a rapist asshole who stood by while the Singer did whatever he had done to the people of Wild Sign that turned them into what we found in that cavern didn’t strike quite the right tone somehow.

He took great photographs and fought for the environment didn’t seem … on point, either.

Leah was not someone Anna could give a hug to, even had it been appropriate to the situation. Sage was the only one who might have been able to do such a thing—and Sage had been a lie. And a hug was only useful if there was time to cry—and the person who gave you a hug was someone you didn’t mind crying in front of.

“I am not sorry” was all that Anna managed.

Leah didn’t reply to that.