“Hey, any news?” She knew she should’ve eased in before asking him straight out, but she couldn’t wait another second.

“Time to go.”

“What? Did Rafe say he’d help?”

“No, he didn’t. But he’ll change his mind. He already has. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

“I don’t even want to know what that means.”

“It means it’s time to get in your cute little Prius and drive to Rafe’s house. We’ll meet him there.”

Emilie looked at her bag. This was nuts. She was going to go into the woods with not one but two very strange men to find a girl who disappeared twenty years ago? A girl who the police said was dead.

“Are you sure it was my sister you saw? Shannon Yates? That’s what she said her name was?”

“Well, no, she went by another name.”

“So maybe it wasn’t her?”

“It was her.”

She walked into the living room and knelt in front of Fritz’s cage. He was sound asleep in his favorite tunnel. Looking at him gave her the smallest shot of courage. She had saved his little life. Not as impressive as saving all the girls Jeremy had, but Fritz was alive because of her, and only her, and that was something

“I looked you two up on Reddit, and they say Rafe has PTSD and a lot of mental problems.”

“Reddit says a lot of things, including but not limited to the theory that we were abducted by the Mothman, sex traffickers, and/or Scientologists. What happened to all your books on courage? Did you return them to the library?”

“I want to be courageous, I swear. I just would prefer to be courageous inside my house.”

Fritz came out of his nest and trundled up a ramp to her, gave her fingertips a love bite. She slipped him a chew stick, and he happily munched away. It must’ve been so strange for him being picked up and carried out of his old life and then finding himself in her house with no explanation. Must have felt like Dorothy being caught in a Kansas tornado and landing in Oz. Except he was much better off in Oz than in Kansas.

“I’m doing it. I’m doing it,” she said.

“You’re being very brave. Good job.”

“I’m not brave. I’m just very susceptible to peer pressure.”

“Either way, I’m proud of you.”

She sighed heavily and rubbed her forehead. “What do I do?”

“I’ll give you directions—”

“I have Google Maps—”

“Rafe’s place is off the map. I’ll text you the directions. Print them out. When you get lost, just wait. I’ll find you.”

“Okay,” she said. “Wait. When I get lost?”

But he’d already hung up.

Emilie dressed for hiking—boots, leggings, sweater, hoodie, beanie hat with a pom-pom because at least she’d look cute when she died of exposure, she told Fritz. She put her bag in the car and Fritz into his carrier. She looked at her house one more time. How easy it would be to call this whole thing off…She could send Jeremy a text that said, Never mind. If my sister is alive, she can find me. Thanks, but no thanks. Then she’d go back in the house, unpack, and get into bed to sleep for a few days or weeks.

Sounded nice. Until she woke up and realized she was all alone in the house with only a rat to talk to. If her mom were here, she knew what she’d say…

“Mom, I’m scared.”

“I know, Emmielou. But scared is a feeling, not an excuse.”

All right. She would do it scared then.

Emilie got into her car, buckled her seatbelt, and drove away without another look back.

She followed Jeremy’s directions to the letter, taking Route 50 and crossing over the Ohio River on the Blennerhassett Island Bridge into West Virginia.

At first, she didn’t notice any difference between Ohio and West Virginia, but after a few miles on the Northwestern Turnpike, it started to get…odd. She couldn’t put her finger on why, only that when she drove over the Ohio River and crossed the border, she felt something shift in the air. Was it the elevation? West Virginia was a mountain state, and it felt like she was driving closer to the sky. But it was more than that. The shadows were heavier here, the sky grayer, the wind wilder. Or was she imagining it?

And the beauty…if she’d known how beautiful these mountains were, these endless rolling hills all shades of October, she would have come every year. It didn’t even look real. It was almost too beautiful to be trusted, too breathtaking to feel safe.

And she did get lost, of course. Although she was looking carefully, driving very slowly, she missed the turn-in to Rafe’s road twice. Eventually, she found the hidden entrance. The trees were thick here and overhung the road like sentinels guarding it from outsiders.

The eerie feeling, like she’d wandered into a different world, only increased when she reached an ivy-covered cabin squatting in the middle of a forest. No cars anywhere, but she tried the front door anyway. Her whole body shook with nerves when she knocked. No one answered, so she walked around to the back.

There, she found a wooden privacy fence with an arched entrance wide enough for two men to pass through side by side. She’d only meant to stick her head in and shout “Hello?” but then she’d seen what she’d seen.

Tigers. Horses. Crows. A fox. A condor. A unicorn. All carved from wood and brightly painted so it felt like she was walking into an enchanted zoo. Stacked stones formed ivy-shrouded portals. Mossy paths led to staircases that led to nowhere. A wooden footbridge fit for a cat spanned a silver pond the size of a child’s swimming pool. From a pole curved like a sickle, a crescent moon hung down, wearing a smile on its face.

Emilie went into the strange garden as if led by unseen hands and found herself standing at a statue of a girl carved out of the trunk of a long-dead tree. She stared at it for a long time, marveling at the resemblance.

She sent Jeremy a quick text saying, Okay, now I believe you.

—

The mail didn’t come to Starcross Hill, so Rafe had to drive to the nearest town of Kingwood to pick it up. Two days after Jeremy had come and gone, he went to the post office and opened his box. Almost empty. Nothing there but a single postcard from Jeremy.

The picture was of Morgantown’s riverfront—the old brick buildings perched dangerously close to the Monongahela River, nothing but a few trees and one natural disaster away from falling into the dark water. On the back, Jeremy had written “436.”

No street name was necessary. Rafe knew those numbers. They were the house number of Jeremy’s old house on Park Street.

And this wasn’t just a postcard. It was an invitation.

Accept it or not? If he went, what would happen? Another useless argument that ended in a stalemate? But if he didn’t go, he’d always wonder if he’d been too cowardly to face Jeremy. Neither sounded very good to him, but he had enough regrets not to add another to his tab.

So he drove the twenty-five miles from Kingwood up to Morgantown. Although he hadn’t lived there in years, it was still home. Cub Scouts. Boy Scouts. Eagle Scouts. Church. Trips to the hardware store on Maple with his father. If he hadn’t made himself accidentally famous by getting lost, he might still live around here. He and Jeremy had both planned on attending WVU. Jeremy could get in free, since his mother taught music there, and Rafe had heard they had a great art program. They’d imagined their futures together back then. After high school, they’d go to college, move into the dorms, and room together, of course. That was the plan. Sometimes he still wondered where he’d be if they hadn’t gotten lost, if they would’ve been able to stick to the plan. It was too late. The past was gone and there was no finding it.

Rafe drove past the school on the way to Park Street. Forty-five degrees out, and the college kids were in shorts and hoodies. Ghosts of a past life he hadn’t gotten to live.

He continued down High Street, past the coffee shops and the ridiculous bronze statue of Morgantown’s favorite native son, Don Knotts, dressed as Barney Fife, then past the Hotel Morgan, where he painted rooms every summer. Best view of the Monongahela River in the whole town.