I leave in my car, but pull around the block, determined to fit the pieces together. As if by fitting them together, all that we’ve lost will suddenly be found again.

I knock on Max’s front door with the binoculars in my hand, but nobody answers. I ring the bell, but nothing. His car isn’t here, either. I consider sending him a text, but we don’t do that anymore. Not since the day of the flood.

“I’m home,” I call when I walk through the front door of my house. But I head straight up the steps to my room.

I flip through Caleb’s pictures, trying to find what had been on his bedside table, what glass had broken. I scan through all of them until I find the one of me and Mia on his bed. There’s a lamp behind us, and there’s a small glass figurine beside it.

I remember, suddenly. It’s a unicorn. Mia gave it to him. If I had noticed it missing, if I’d given it any thought at all, I might’ve assumed it had been moved to a different shelf, or a drawer, or maybe that Mia took it back for her own collection, changing her mind.

But I didn’t really notice. And now I know it was what had shattered that day. Shards of it ground into his beige rug. Another victim of his arms thrown out in dreams, or in nightmares.

Something settles inside me, this piece of information, as if I can make sense of things after all. Part of a movie scene, played in reverse: fragments from the floor un-breaking, un-falling, resettling on the surface of his bedside table. Everything slips into place, and I believe once more that I can trace the start and end, the cause and effect, the trail of events that led to Caleb in a car, heading east.

Logging onto my computer, I see I have a message. My pulse picks up, and my finger hovers over the icon. It’s from Ashlyn Patterson, and it’s like there’s another version of Caleb in the screen tucked just beyond here. I can almost see him, waiting there.

She has written a single line in return: I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know any Caleb Evers.

I groan out loud and go back to scrolling through the images on the other profiles, but no other Ashlyn Patterson fits the description. They’re either too young or too old, too unrecognizable.

I keep scanning faces until my dad calls me for dinner.

Downstairs, I eat in the dining room with my parents, but my heart isn’t in it. My stomach isn’t in it. But my parents let me be, ignoring the fact that I’m just moving the food around my plate. I’ve been in and out, here and gone, since that day in mid-September, when Caleb drove off the bridge. I’ve quit cross-country, but I run alone, at night, in the dark, with nothing but the sound of air rushing in and out, the imaginary rumble of a river between my gasping breaths.

I’ve also taken to my room, for days on end. My mom brought food up to me instead, when I didn’t come down for it. They’ve been trying, I can see that. They’ve said all the right words, alternately given me attention and then given me space. I think they’ve read a book on dealing with your teen’s grief. Everything feels like a sound bite.

“Do you need anything?” my father asks, clearing his throat. And I know he’s asking about more than the food. Opening the lines of communication. I feel I must’ve run them dry by now.

“I have homework,” I say. “But thanks for dinner.”

“Jessa,” my mother calls after me, but something in her voice makes everything too close. Spending so much time in his room, it all feels too raw.

I have to get out of here. I pack up my backpack, throw the binoculars in the bag, and blow down the stairs. It’s almost eight—Max must be home by now.

“I’m meeting Hailey,” I call, and I leave before they can call me back.

I ring the bell, and this time I hear footsteps coming down the stairs. Max throws open the door wearing worn jeans and a thin T-shirt, and I think he’s been working out. But he holds his breath, seeing me there.

“Max, did you go through his email?” I ask.

He shakes his head, his mind trying to catch up. “Did I what?”

“His email. You went through his room, looking for money. And his email password was changed.”

We’re standing in the dimly lit kitchen, just to the side of his front door. “And you think that was me?”

“I’m running out of options as to who else had his password.”

“I didn’t know his password.”

“You never saw it?”

He doesn’t answer at first. He doesn’t just lie and say no. “I don’t try to look. But I know part of it.”

“Which part?” I press.

“Thirty-six. His lacrosse number.”

I nod. “Yes. And now it’s changed.”

“So he changed it.”

But I’m shaking my head. “After, Max. Someone changed it after.”

He has frozen, both believing and disbelieving. “What do you want me to say, Jessa? I said it wasn’t me.”

I want him to tell me the truth. I want to look in his eyes and know. I want to see the lie, the expression shutter, his gaze shift to the side. Instead I unzip my bag and pull out the binoculars, watch as his throat moves as he swallows. The way he instinctively takes a step back, as if remembering that night himself.