“Was anyone else staying out here that night?”

“One of the other campsites was occupied, but you see how it’s set up. They’re pretty spread out, along different paths. Even if the sister’d known there was someone nearby she probably wouldn’t have known how to find them, especially in the dark. And I doubt they’d of been much help even if she managed it. They were a couple from Spartanburg in their seventies. Slept through the whole thing, came out in the morning to load up their car and dump their trash and found the parking lot full of EMTs and the fire marshal. No idea what was going on.”

“So which way did she go to get help? The sister. Out toward the road?”

“Yep. Two miles from here to the main road, and when she got out there, no cars, obviously, at four in the morning. Took another couple of hours before somebody came along. By then she was a couple of miles closer to Pine Mountain. And it was a cold night, and she was just in flip-flops and a long T-shirt. People can be surprised by how cold it gets up in the mountains. Even in August. But I guess they’d been planning for that.”

Jake frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, they had the heater, didn’t they?”

“You mean, like, an electric heater?”

Mike, still a couple of steps ahead, turned back to give Jake a look.

“Not an electric heater. A propane heater.”

“And that’s how the fire started?”

“Well, it’s a pretty good bet!” Mike actually laughed. “Usually you’re worried about CO2 with those puppies, but you never want to set them down near anything, or put anything over them, or have them in a place somebody can knock them over. The newer ones can detect if they fall over. There’s an alarm that sounds. But this one wasn’t new.” He shrugged. “We think that’s what happened, anyway. She told the coroner she got up to use the toilet in the middle of the night. Walked down there to where we parked. Gone about ten minutes in all. Afterward, she said she might have brushed against it when she went out. Maybe it could’ve fallen over. She was a total mess, talking about it.”

He stopped. They were in a clearing, about thirty feet long. Jake could still hear the creek but now the wind in the tall pines and hickories overhead were just as loud. Mike had his hands in his pockets. His native irreverence seemed to have departed.

“So this is it?”

“Yep. The tent was over there.” He nodded at the cleared, flat place. There was a fire pit beside it, not recently used.

“It’s really the back of beyond,” Jake heard himself say.

“Sure. Or center of the universe, if you like to camp.”

He wondered if Rose and Dianna Parker liked to camp. He realized, again, how little he knew about them, and how much of what he thought he knew had turned out to be wrong. That’s what happens when you learn about people from a novel—somebody else’s or your own, just the same.

“Too bad she didn’t have a phone with her,” Jake said.

“She had one, but it was inside the tent, and by the time she got back the whole thing was in flames. It just went up, and everything in it.” He paused. “Not that it would’ve worked out here, anyway.”

Jake looked at him. “What?”

“The phone. You found that out yourself.”

Indeed he had.

“Do you have any idea why they were here?” he asked Mike. “Two women from Vermont at a campground in Georgia?”

Mike shrugged. “Nope. I never talked to her. Roy Porter did, though. He’s the coroner in Rabun Gap. I just assumed they were traveling around, camping. If you knew the family you probably have a better idea than either of us.” He peered at Jake. “You did say you knew the family.”

“I knew the brother of the woman who died, but I never asked him about it. And he died a year after this.” He gestured at the campground.

“Yeah? Bad luck in that family.”

“The worst,” Jake had to agree. If it was luck. “Do you think the coroner would talk to me?”

“Don’t see why not. We’ve come a long way since Deliverance. We’re pretty nice to outsiders now.”

“You’re … what?” Jake said.

“Deliverance. They shot that movie a couple miles from here.”

That sent a chill through him. He couldn’t help it.

“Good thing you didn’t tell me before!” he said, with what he hoped would pass for a backslapping kind of tone.

“Or you wouldn’t have driven out to the back of beyond with a total stranger and a phone that won’t work.”

He couldn’t tell if Mike was joking.

“Hey, could I take you both out to dinner, to say thanks?”

Mike seemed to give this more consideration than it deserved. In the end, however, he agreed. “I can give Roy a call and ask him.”

“That would be fantastic. Where should we go?”

It was a very New York question, needless to say, but in Clayton the range of options was not extensive. He arranged to meet the two of them at a place called the Clayton Café, and after Mike dropped him back at the store to retrieve his car, Jake found a Quality Inn and checked in for the night. He knew better than to phone or even text Anna. Instead, he lay on the bed watching an old episode of Oprah in which Dr. Phil advised a couple of sixteen-year-olds to grow up and take responsibility for their baby. He nearly fell asleep, lulled by the groans of audience disapproval.

The Clayton Café was a storefront on the town’s main street with a striped awning and a sign that said SERVING THE COMMUNITY SINCE 1931. Inside were tables with black-checkered tablecloths and orange chairs and walls covered with local art. A woman met him at the door, carrying two plates piled with spaghetti and tomato sauce, each with a wedge of garlic bread balanced on top. Looking at them, he was reminded of the fact that he hadn’t eaten since grabbing an English muffin for the road, that morning in Athens.

“I’m meeting Mike,” he said, belatedly realizing he’d never asked Mike’s last name. “And …” He had forgotten the coroner’s name completely. “One other person.”

She pointed at a table at the other end of the room, under a painting of a forest grove very like the one he’d visited a few hours earlier. A man was already there: elderly, African-American, wearing a Braves sweatshirt. “Be right over,” the waitress said.

The man looked up, just at that moment. His face, as was probably appropriate to his profession, gave away nothing, not even a smile. Jake still could not remember his name. He crossed the room and held out his hand.

“Hello, I’m Jake. Are you … Mike’s friend?”

“I am Mike’s neighbor.” The correction seemed highly consequential. He gave Jake’s outstretched hand an appraising look. Then, apparently concluding that it met his standard of hygiene, he shook it.

“Thank you for joining me.”

“Thank you for inviting me. It isn’t often a complete stranger decides to buy me dinner.”

“Oh, that happens to me all the time.”

The joke landed about as badly as it could have. Jake took a seat.

“What’s good here?”

“Pretty much everything,” said the coroner. He hadn’t picked up his own menu. “The burgers. Country fried steak. The casseroles are always tasty.”

He pointed at something beyond Jake’s shoulder. Jake turned to find the specials board. Today’s casserole was chicken, broccoli, and rice. He also saw Mike enter, nod at someone seated just inside the door, and make his way across the room.

“Mike,” said the coroner.

“Hi, Mike.”

“Hello, Roy,” said Mike. “You two getting acquainted?”

No, thought Jake.

“Yes, indeed,” said Roy.

“Mike really put himself out for me today.”

“So I understand,” Roy said. “Not sure why he troubled himself.”

The waitress came. Jake ordered what Mike was having: poppy seed chicken, mashed greens, and fried okra. Roy ordered the trout.

“Do you fish?” Jake asked him.

“I’ve been known to.”

Mike shook his head. “He’s a maniac. This man has a magic touch.”

Roy shrugged, but he was up against his own considerable pride. “Well, I don’t know.”

“I wish I had the patience for that.”

“How do you know you don’t?” Mike said.

“I don’t know. Not my nature, I guess.”

“What is your nature, would you say?”

“I’d say, to find things out.”

“Is that a nature?” the coroner said. “Or a purpose?”

“They merge,” said Jake, becoming annoyed. Was this guy only here for a free dinner? He looked as if he could afford his own damn trout. “I’m very curious about the woman who died up there at the campground. Mike might have told you, I knew her brother.”

“Their brother,” said Roy.

“I’m sorry?”

“They were sisters. Ergo, the brother of one would have been the brother of the other. Or am I missing something?”

Jake took a breath to steady himself. “You sound as if you might share some of my questions about what happened.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” said Roy mildly. “I have no questions. And I don’t see why you should have any, either. Mike here says you’re a writer. Am I being interviewed for a publication of some kind?”