We were made in the dark. I used to hate it when Johnny said that, but now I know it’s true.

Sunlight flickered on the windshield as I turned the wheel and the road curved, tightening. Trees pressed in like a wall on both sides of the cracked asphalt, making the old highway that snaked through the Six Rivers National Forest look impossibly narrower. I could feel that cinching in my lungs, too, the air squeezing from them just a little more the deeper into the forest I drove. I’d expected that.

From above, the little blue car would look like an insect between the giant, towering redwoods, and even just imagining it made me uneasy. I’d never liked the feeling that I couldn’t see into the distance, like the whole world might have ended on the other side of those trees and I wouldn’t know it. I guess, really, it had.

There was no world without Johnny.

The thought made the ache rising in my throat travel down my arms, into the fingers that curled around the smooth leather of the steering wheel. It had been three and a half months since I got the call that my brother was gone, but I’d known at least a day before that. The part of me that wasn’t constructed of bone and blood had just…known. Maybe even down to the minute.

I glanced at the duffel bag on the passenger seat, the only luggage I’d brought for the two weeks I’d be in Six Rivers. I couldn’t remember now what I’d even packed. In fact, I hadn’t even been able to think of what I might need. In the twenty years since I’d seen the tiny, claustrophobic logging town, I’d done my best to forget it. I’d avoided these winding mountain roads, using every excuse I could think of to keep from coming back to this place. But there was no denying that leaving Six Rivers and never looking back had come at a cost.