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Emme held the phone up in front of her and pressed Addie's number from the recent calls list, a motion so fluid and instinctual that she didn't even realize she had done it until the phone went directly to voicemail. Addie's cheerful voice bit into her. I can't answer the phone right now. Please leave a message and I'll call you back as soon as I can.

"Addie, it's me. Again." Emme swallowed. "Just—please call me back. Please. I need to know you've gotten my messages, that you know what's going on." She waited a moment, as if listening for an answer. "Okay. Bye." She hung up, shoved her phone into her pocket, and pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. Pops of color and light exploded behind her eyelids. Silence stretched across the house, the only sound the ticking of the copper clock her mother, Sunny, had bought at one of the local artisan shops in town. When she counted to a hundred and twenty ticks, she blew out a hard breath and pulled her hands away from her face.

The mess in the living room mocked her. The piles she'd deemed for trash or donation seemed infinitely smaller than the ones she still had to go through. She picked up the stack of papers she'd fallen on, folders of Addie's report cards going back to elementary school, and hesitated. She couldn't throw them out without Addie's permission. With a groan, she dumped them onto the To Be Determined pile she'd created, which had grown bigger by the day. At least she didn't have to worry about her own elementary school work. There were no mementos of hers prior to middle school, nothing from before she was eleven, when they'd had to run from their home in the middle of the night, taking only what they could carry.

She crawled over to the box that she'd pulled off the shelf and caught the writing scrawled on the side in black marker. The sight of her mother's handwriting still jolted her heart, a tangible piece of her, so close that if she just reached her hand back her mother would squeeze her fingers. It took a moment to register the words written on the box. Emme: Cases.

With a shaky breath, Emme pushed the lid off the box and peered inside. Newspaper clippings were stacked haphazardly, some inside folders with names on the tabs, others loosely tossed in. Everything had shifted when the box tumbled from the shelf. Emme thumbed through the folders, walking through the graveyard of her past cases, each name like a fresh wound. In every article, Emme's name was carefully highlighted in yellow, like some sort of macabre Playbill for murder instead of theater. Her throat tight, Emme moved the folders to the side. A loose clipping that had probably been on top before the box fell fluttered onto her lap. Emme froze. The headline blared out at her: BODY FOUND IN GRAND CANYON IDENTIFIED.

Emme jammed the lid back on the box. Her mother may have kept the articles because she was proud of her daughter's work, but Emme had lived through each of those clippings and didn't need the reminders. She began to drag the box to the trash pile, but instead of depositing it, she whisked the box up into her arms and marched out

the back door.

The morning sun had crested over the mountains that ringed Springdale, bathing the red rock cliffs of Zion Canyon in ruby light. The sky was clear blue without a cloud in sight. It was a hiker's dream, and no doubt the trails in the park were crowded. Emme dumped the box next to the old stone fireplace that sat at the edge of the property, surrounded by overgrown grass and splintered Adirondack chairs. There was a small stack of wood next to the fireplace and a weather-beaten box of long matches on the ledge above it. Emme made a little pile of kindling out of twigs and dried leaves that had fallen from the branches of the oak tree arching over the backyard, stacked three logs into a triangle the way she'd first learned in wilderness training so many years ago, and lit the kindling. The flames ate through the leaves quickly, nibbling at the logs for a few minutes before bursting into a crackling ring of fire. Emme sat cross-legged for a long moment, her vision blurred by the dancing of the flames. The heat flushed her face, burning away any tears.

She pulled the box to her side and lifted off the lid. One by one, she drew out the folders and tossed the clippings into the blaze, watching each one blacken and curl, turn white, and wisp away into ash. As each article went into the flames, she remembered how there was something in every case that broke a little piece of her, how the six years she'd been on the job had chipped away at her. It wasn't just the Hannah DeLeo case. It was years of seeing the ugliest side of humanity in some of the world's most beautiful places, a juxtaposition that should be impossible but was all too real. She emptied the box, turning each of her cases into smoke, until the only piece left was the article about Hannah. She held the thin paper up, the ink from the newsprint darkening her fingers.