Tyler looked disbelieving. “You can’t not remember anything.”

“I remember nothing. It’s like I was born the night I was found. There was only darkness before that, and then someone switched on a light, and that is where my memory starts.”

Tyler’s expression softened. “You were seven. You were young. I hardly remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday. I mean, I don’t eat breakfast, but you know what I mean.”

“Do you know how my father died?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. I wondered if he knew because Grey told him, or if he knew because he’d read about it on the internet.

I thought of the note Grey had pulled from his pocket when we found him, the note she’d torn into shreds so our mother wouldn’t find it: I didn’t want this, it had said.

What if Gabe really hadn’t wanted to die?

What if . . . what if Grey had made him?

Because she knew. Of course she knew. Grey knew that she wasn’t Grey.

She remembered everything.

“There are three little girls in a grave wearing necklaces with our names on them. What if, in the story Grey tells about what happened to us, we were not the three little girls?” I said. I met Tyler’s eyes. “What if we were the monsters?”

* * *

I fastened Iris Hollow’s locket back around her neck before I reburied her with her sisters. When it was done, I put my palm against the soft dirt that entombed them. “I’m sorry,” I said to all of them. “For whatever happened to you. I’m so sorry.” Rosie stood statue-still at their grave, still draped in Vivi’s green tweed coat, while Tyler went inside to fetch Vivi’s backpack.

There would be no more tartan way markers to follow now, but that didn’t matter—I knew that we were getting closer to Vivi and Grey. My Vivi and Grey. Whatever linked us together told me that.

“Wait,” Tyler said as I set off into the marsh once more. He was close behind me, but Rosie hadn’t moved from the grave.

Tyler went back and knelt in front of his sister. “Come, my darling,” he said, tugging her hand gently, but Rosie shook her head. “Don’t . . . you want to come home? You can see Eomma and Appa. They miss you so much. You can see Selena and Camilla. They’re all grown up now. You would be so proud of them. Lena became an architect and Cammy is a pediatrician. She just had a baby girl a few weeks ago. She named her Rosie, after you. I think you’d like her. You can play together, you can go back to school, you can do all the things you—”

Rosie reached out and placed her fingers against Tyler’s lips to quiet him. “Let me go, Ty,” she rasped. It was the first time I’d heard her speak. Her voice was small and sweet, her throat dry from years of disuse.

Tyler shook his head, his lips mashed together to keep from breaking down. “No,” he said. “No, I want you to come home.”

“Let me go,” she said again, still gentle, her small hands stroking the sides of his face.

Tyler’s ribs were convulsing with silent sobs now. Tears tracked down his cheeks, and his jaw quaked. “I’m staying with you,” he managed, his voice thick with pain. “I’m not leaving you again. I’m staying right here, like I should have the first time.”

Rosie smiled and leaned in to whisper something in Tyler’s ear. Then she looped her arms around his shoulders and hugged him tightly. Tyler was crying hard now, the type of crying you usually do alone in the shower when you think no one can hear you.

And then, suddenly, the green coat she had been wearing dropped to the ground and Tyler stumbled forward, his hands sinking into the mud.

Rosie Yang’s soul was untethered from her brother’s grief.

Rosie Yang was gone.

* * *

We walked through the Halfway for an another eternity. We rarely spoke to each other as we fell into a monotonous slog, one foot after the other. After a time, the marshland dried up and we found ourselves on solid ground again. We took off our wet shoes and slung them around our necks by their laces to dry. We inspected our darkening toenails, the way they had begun to pull away from their beds.

There were more rivers of the dead. There were more figures gathered around doors. The Halfway kept unfolding itself to us, stretching on and on and on.

I was glad for the ache in my bones, the sharpness in my chest. I was glad for each pluck of pain that would not let me sink too deep into my thoughts, because my thoughts were a well of horror.

 You are not you.

 Don’t think that.

 If you are not you, what are you?

 Don’t think that.

 Three little girls fell through a crack in the world. Three things that looked like little girls came back.

 Don’t think that.

 What did Grey do to the Hollow sisters?

 Don’t think that.

 What did you do?

We stopped to rest in the roots of a soft tree, its bark skin-warm and splitting with rot beneath our backs. I was exhausted. A prickle of bone-deep pain nudged against my thoughts with every movement from my ribs. I wanted to cry, but I was too tired.

Grey and Vivi were close now. They were alive, both of them, but they were weak and fading. I worried that the thin thread that tied me to them might break if I slept, but my mind was running hot with fatigue and my body yearned for rest.

I collapsed back against the tree, then sucked in a hard breath through my teeth as a rocking wave of pain battered me again and again.

“Let me see your ribs,” Tyler said. It was the first time he’d spoken in hours.

“Why?” I snapped, my eyes still closed. “What are you going to do?”