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CHAPTER 12: MATT Icleaned the bathroom twice. The first time, I scrubbed the tile until my knuckles were raw, got into the grout with a toothbrush the way Elena always said you were supposed to. Wiped down the mirror until there wasn’t a single streak, organized the cabinet with her moisturizer on the left and

CHAPTER 11: ELENA The goat didn’t want to cooperate. She was a young Nigerian Dwarf, caramel and white, with horizontal pupils that tracked me like I was the enemy. Her owner—a teenage girl named Becca who’d driven her here in the back of a Honda Civic—stood in the corner of the exam room wringing her

CHAPTER 10: MATT Icalled in sick for the first time in six years. Told Sergeant Donovan I had a stomach bug, maybe food poisoning. He said feel better, get some rest, see you tomorrow. I said thanks and hung up and sat there with the phone in my hand, staring at nothing. I wasn’t going

CHAPTER 9: ELENA Iwoke up in my childhood bedroom and, for a moment, nothing made sense. The ceiling was wrong, as was the light. Even the smell was all wrong—old wood and lavender instead of Matt’s cologne and the faint musk of the city. I blinked up at the water stain in the corner, the

CHAPTER 8: MATT Angela’s door was unlocked. I stepped inside and stopped. The mess hit me first: dishes overflowing the sink, a week of meals she never cleaned up. Wine bottles lined the counter like a row of little defeats. The blinds were shut, the room lit only by a lonely lamp that made everything

CHAPTER 7: MATT The taillights disappeared around the corner, and then she was gone. I stood in the driveway barefoot, gravel biting into my heels, watching the empty road like she might turn around. Like she might come back. She wasn’t coming back. The night air was cold. I hadn’t noticed until now, hadn’t noticed

CHAPTER 6: ELENA The highway stretched out ahead of me, empty and dark. Three hours to Millbrook. Three hours of nothing but white lines and my own thoughts. I cranked the heat up even though I wasn’t cold, gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles went white, and drove. My phone sat dark on the

CHAPTER 5: ELENA Matt lowered the phone and his thumb hit the red button, cutting Angela off mid-sentence. The silence that followed pressed in from every direction, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator and the uneven hitch of his breathing. “That was rude,” I said. “She seemed upset.” His eyes flicked to mine,

CHAPTER 4: ELENA Iwas twelve the first time I watched something die that I desperately wanted to save. The mare had caught her leg in the fence, the old barbed wire my father had been meaning to replace for months biting deep into her skin. By the time we found her that morning, the sun

CHAPTER 3: ELENA Idrove on autopilot, taking the route home I’d driven a thousand times before. Past the gas station where Matt always stopped for coffee on Sunday mornings. Past the Italian place where we’d celebrated our first anniversary. Past the dry cleaner that never got his uniform shirts quite right. The flash drive felt