Lola and Tyrel were already up and busy cooking canned meat, rice, beans, and flatbread over an open fire. I left Sophia sleeping and followed my nose toward breakfast.

“Smells great,” I said, sitting down in my chair.

“Thanks,” Lola replied, smiling. I watched her for a moment, having a hard time believing the change that had occurred in her. She had gained weight—not much, but enough she did not look gaunt anymore—and the bags under her eyes were gone. She moved with easy grace, her eyes bright and alive. It could not believe I was looking at the same sad, sallow, booze-soaked woman we had found hiding from the world at Canyon Lake.

Shifting my gaze, I noticed Tyrel watching her as well, smiling, his dark black eyes glistening with what I could only describe as infatuation. Lola seemed to be aware of the scrutiny, but made no effort to discourage it. Quite the opposite, actually. Despite the leaden pain in my chest, I found myself smiling.

“Hey, Earth to Ty,” I said, tossing a pebble at my old friend.

“What?” he grumped, throwing the pebble back at me.

“How’s the leg?”

“Stiff as hell,” he said, straightening it out and wincing. “But getting better. It was a through-and-through, no deformation of the projectile. I can walk on it without a crutch now, but it’s still slowing me down. I’ll be glad when it heals up.”

There were probably only a few people in the world who could handle a gunshot wound to the leg with such aplomb, and Ty was one of them. I reminded myself never to get on his bad side.

“Glad to hear you’re getting better. Now how about some of that grub?”

“How about you get off your ass and come get it?”

Good old Ty. Such a giver.

I found a clean plate, piled it with grub, and covered the whole works with a piece of flatbread. Despite the growling in my stomach, I waited a few minutes for steam from the food to soften the stiff bread. When it became limp to the touch, I piled the ingredients and gorged on what I had affectionately come to refer to as camp tacos.

Lola sat down next to Tyrel and started eating her breakfast. I asked her, “Did you go see Lauren last night?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you get her what she needed?”

She nodded, swallowed a mouthful of beans, and said, “Yeah, but it was kind of a weird request coming from her. She doesn’t normally drink.”

I went still. Cold dread bloomed in my chest and spread to my face and hands. There are moments in life when seemingly unrelated events suddenly become warning signs, when a highlight reel of red flags you should have connected long ago flashes through your mind. Maybe you were distracted, or scared, or angry, or some other pressing matter demanded your attention. Whatever the case, there is an instant of clarity, and those signs suddenly coalesce into a single aggregated realization. A terrible understanding descends.

“What did you give her, Lola?”

Something in my voice made her look up, eyes wide and round. “I told you. She wanted a drink, so I snuck her a bottle of lemon vodka. What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

I dropped my plate and sprinted for the medical tent.

She wasn’t in her cot. The tent was empty. I stumbled outside, heart pounding, a loud ringing in my ears. A soldier walked by whom I recognized, one of the medics from the night I had brought Lauren in. I ran to him and grabbed his arm.

“Where did she go?”

He stepped back, one hand raised defensively. “Whoa! Calm down, man. What are you talking about?”

“My stepmother, Lauren Hicks. The woman I brought in the other night. Where is she?”

The medic shrugged. “I don’t know, man. You tell me. She said she was going back to your campsite when she left.”

The ringing grew louder. I had to shout to hear myself over it. “What time did she leave?”

“Around midnight. Why? What’s the problem?”

I wanted to gouge his eyes out. I wanted to pull my gun and shoot him in the face until the trigger clicked on an empty magazine. “You … let her leave?”

“Of course. There was nothing else we could do for her. I don’t have the authority to make her stay if she doesn’t want to.”

“Did she take anything with her?”

“Um … a few personal items. I’m not sure what they were; she wrapped them up in one of her shirts. Oh, and she borrowed a pen and a notepad from me. If you find her, could you ask her to bring those back? We’re kind of … hey, where you goin’?”

The medic said something else, but I didn’t catch it. The ringing had gotten too loud, punctuated by the timpani of my heart thudding, thudding, thudding. I walked a circle around the tent until I spotted a track that matched Lauren’s hiking boots. The trail led me to a deuce-and-a-half parked on the outer perimeter. Lauren’s tracks stopped at the rear bumper. I stepped up into the cargo area and shined my flashlight around.

She lay on one of the benches, slumped over as if she had been sitting down, then lost consciousness. I rushed to her side and shook her.

“Lauren, wake up.” No response.

There is a stillness that comes over a person in death, an utter lack of movement, no slight stirring of respiratory action, no involuntary twitches, no thrum of pulse against the skin of the neck. Nothing.

The tears started flowing, then. What small spark of hope I had left died when I laid my fingers over Lauren’s carotid artery. I left them against her cold skin for a long moment, praying I would feel a beat, a flutter, anything.

My prayers went unanswered.

*****

The troops who took her away later told me they found us because they heard someone screaming. I don’t remember that part. I remember pulling her into my arms, and the dreadful realization that rigor mortis had begun to set in, and wondering what I was going to tell my father, and how the ringing in my ears became so loud I thought it would shatter the world.

The rest is a blur.

I came to my senses in the medical tent. When I sat up on my cot, I felt a hand touch my shoulder and looked up to see my father sitting across from me.

“Dad …”

“How are you feeling, son?”

I shook my head. There was nothing to say. Dad took my hand and pressed a piece of paper into it.

“She left a note, Caleb.”

I stared at it, a little white square with my stepmother’s last words on it. When I looked back up at my father, his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, his cheeks hollow, sunken, and covered in beard stubble. “Read it,” he said.

It took a few seconds to force my hands to respond. They shook as I unfolded the paper and held it up to the light.

Joe and Caleb,

This is not your fault. I did not do this because of you.

I’ve had enough. I look ahead of me, and I see nothing but darkness. There is no light at the end, no hope.

I can’t do this anymore.

The two of you brought me laughter, and love, and the best years of my life. You were the brightest stars in my sky. I will always love you.

We will see each other again, in a better place.

Take care of each other.

Lauren.

A sudden anger seized me. I crumpled the note and threw it to the ground. “How could she be so fucking selfish.”

“I’m sorry, son.”

“She should have said something. She should have come to us for help.”

“Caleb, don’t do this.”

“I can’t believe she would just leave us like this!”

Dad moved over to sit beside me. “There’s nothing we can do now, son. Getting angry and bitter won’t change a thing. And it won’t bring her back.”

My father put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me to his chest just as he had done a thousand times throughout my life. I sagged against him, his strength supporting me while I wept, and I remembered a smiling, auburn-haired young woman with hazel eyes and a shining smile and a laugh like the sound of bells ringing.