She thanked the principals, the teachers, her coworkers, the families. And then, one by one, she called the students up and introduced them, announced which school they’d just graduated from and what college they’d be attending. When she called Sandra up, and then the three girls from Lincoln, she had to clench her fists to keep her voice from shaking. Dr. Morrison handed them each a certificate—and a check for $2,500. It wasn’t much—not enough to cover tuition or rent—but for many of them, it would pay for them to travel to campus. It would enable them to buy clothes, or a laptop, or a desk and chair, or glasses. Each student posed with Gwen and Dr. Morrison as a photographer took a picture. It was time-consuming, but the families couldn’t get enough—they erupted in cheers and applause for every student.

As Gwen spoke the words about experience and strength, she knew that they applied to her too. Before last summer she wouldn’t have been able to stand up and speak in front of a crowd. Before last summer she couldn’t have said these words and meant them. But since she’d returned from her trip to the Sierras, everything had taken on a different light. It hadn’t happened right away. For weeks she’d called the Forest Service every few days, hoping for word about Tracy. For months she’d checked and double-checked her windows and doors; she’d dreamt of A.J. and José and gunfire, and constantly thought there was someone behind her. But A.J. was dead, and none of their names had come out in the media. She carried the burden, as did Todd, of having taken a life, but it was a burden that was never made public. All that was reported—just like the rangers had promised—was that members of two rival groups, a white supremacist group and a faction of a Mexican drug cartel—had killed each other, and that law enforcement had eradicated their gardens. There was no mention of Gwen and the others at all.

Because of this, no one outside of Oscar and Todd were aware of what had happened. As far as her family and colleagues knew, they’d gotten lost and had to be helped out of the mountains. One of them, Tracy, had never come back; there had never been any word of her. She’d just vanished, and Gwen felt the loss of her, despite her lingering confusion, even anger. It was just like Tracy to disappear so that the story didn’t have to end. Maybe she was still in the mountains, outrunning threats, whether real or imagined. Maybe she was trying to settle a score with A.J.’s brother, or José’s men. Maybe she’d gotten out and gone somewhere else, come up with a new name and started over. Or maybe she’d gone deeper into the mountains to forge a new life, just like she’d said she wanted to do.

But Gwen suspected it was none of these, suspected her friend was gone; that she’d wandered off and fallen or hurt herself and hadn’t made it out. She was saddened by the reckless way that Tracy had handled her life—maybe if you courted danger the way she did, you could only beat it for so long. Tracy’s house stood unchanged, and Oscar said her family didn’t want to touch it, just in case she did come back. If it hadn’t been for Tracy’s disappearance, it would have been hard to believe their trip had really happened.

Once Gwen had recovered physically and gone back to work, the slightest things gave her pleasure—her banter with the receptionist, her first sessions with the next crop of kids in the new school year, even the damned boring management meetings that took up half of each Tuesday. She was grateful to be able to do these things, grateful to be alive. And after what she’d been through, she found that she wasn’t inclined to keep quiet anymore if she had an opinion. She proposed several adjustments to their programs and Dr. Morrison, after being surprised at her assertiveness, took her suggestions. It wasn’t long before she was promoted. Now she not only ran her own youth groups, she supervised all the other staff who ran groups too.

“You keep this up,” Dr. Morrison warned, “and you might be running this place someday.”

The promotion had led to a raise that made another change possible—six months before, with Oscar’s help, she’d bought a condo in Baldwin Hills. Yes, she’d needed to borrow some money from her mother and stepfather to cover the down payment, but she would pay this back as quickly as she could. She didn’t have much furniture yet, and there was nothing on the walls. But there was a decent-sized grassy area where Timber could run, ringed by a small garden of native plants. She couldn’t be happier about her condo-in-progress. She finally had a place of her own.

As the last of the students stepped off the stage, Gwen felt her eyes welling with tears. A year ago, her sense of purpose and faith had been wavering; she’d despaired over whether she could really make a difference. She didn’t feel that way anymore. Not every kid they helped was going to make it, she knew. But many of them did.

As she looked out at the boys—jostling and kidding with each other, accepting the hearty handshakes from men and cooing from the women—she thought for a moment of Robert. He’d been gone for two years now. She still grieved for him, but the pain was more manageable these days. She knew that he was still with her, and always would be. And the best way she could honor his life, she realized, was to fully live her own.

* * *

From his seat in the fifth row, Todd watched Gwen and smiled so much his face began to hurt. She looked lovely up there, and happy. It wasn’t just that she was wearing a bright, patterned dress and that her hair was flowing over her shoulders. Something exuded from her, a confidence and self-possession. He could see the other men checking her out, and felt pride and amusement. Gwen seemed oblivious to the attention; she didn’t even get why her colleague Devon had wanted to hike with her, and had gotten his hackles up when Todd appeared.

Todd was glad to be here today, glad to have something to do on a Saturday morning. Several months ago, Kelly had asked him to leave, and so now he was renting a one-bedroom condo off of Beverly Glen and getting used to being single again. Things had been tense when he returned from his trip—she knew there was something he wasn’t telling her. And she wasn’t pleased by the sudden crashing of their household by Timber—who was wild, and wrestled with leashes, nipped and herded the children; who jumped on tables with all four feet and ate straight off the dinner plates. But Todd couldn’t keep up the charade anymore. Things had changed. He had changed. And he was surprised by how much he’d been shaken up by Tracy’s disappearance. For all her gung-ho craziness, she’d brought something out in him, in all of them, and it was strange to think that her vibrancy, her life, might now be gone from the world.

Not that the separation from Kelly had been easy. Even though he knew it was over between them, it had still been a tough few months. He missed his wife, he missed what they once had been. And he missed his children terribly. Right now they were spending every Sunday with him and a couple of nights during the week; otherwise, the condo felt horribly empty. Dogs weren’t allowed in his complex, and Timber was most attached to Gwen anyway, so as soon as she had closed on her place with the yard, Timber joined her in Baldwin Hills. He made the best of the time he had with his kids and tried to keep things cordial with Kelly. He’d heard from a colleague that she was dating an heir to one of the city’s old oil families.

Because of the divorce and upcoming custody battle, it wasn’t practical to leave his job. He didn’t like it any better than he had before. But volunteering with Gwen’s agency had given him a new sense of purpose. Like today—although he didn’t admit it to Gwen, he’d been nervous about coming to Watts, to an event in an open-air venue that had apparently been a gang stronghold. Even this morning he’d felt exposed and self-conscious—he was the only person, including the cops, who wasn’t black or Latino. But the park had been surprisingly nice, and the event was clearly a success, with no hint of trouble. And as he saw the parents hugging and crying over their kids, the kids who were so thrilled just to have money for clothes, he felt both shame and pride. He had come to take so much for granted. He was impressed by the park too—he would never have believed there was such a pretty place in Watts. But there was beauty everywhere, he realized, everywhere around, if you just knew where to look.