LOGINMia"Did anyone—" I started, then stopped. Tried again. "Was there anyone she was close to? Inside? Anyone she talked to?"More paper sounds. "Ms. Porter was described by staff as reserved. She had no documented incidents with other inmates. No close associations were observed."Reserved.That Taylor had been reserved in prison."What about her cell?" I asked. "Was there anything—journals, letters, drawings—anything that might explain—""Standard personal effects were recovered and logged," the warden said. His voice had taken on that administrative tone again. "A few books from the prison library. Toiletries. A photograph. Nothing that indicated—""A photograph of what?"A pause. "I'm not at liberty to discuss specific personal effects during an ongoing investigation, ma'am.""The medical examiner will conduct a thorough autopsy," he continued. "Toxicology reports typically take four to six weeks. A full psychological autopsy will be performed, which includes interviews with staff, r
MiaThe words came through the phone and landed somewhere inside my skull but didn't connect to anything."Ms. Porter was found unconscious in her cell during a routine check at approximately 4:17 a.m."My eyes were open but I wasn't seeing the room anymore. I was seeing the back of my own eyelids from the inside, that strange red darkness you get when you close your eyes against bright light. The room was dim. And something was happening to my vision, tunneling inward, the edges going soft and dark.I blinked. Once. Twice. The room came back.The gray blanket was still half-covering me, one corner twisted around my left leg. My coffee mug was on the table where I'd left it—I could see a film forming on the surface of the water, that oily shimmer that happens when water sits too long. Kyle was still asleep at the other end of the couch,.Everything was exactly as it had been thirty seconds ago."Medical personnel arrived immediately but were unable to revive her. Time of death was det
MiaGone.I'm alone in the garden. My hands are still in the dirt. I can feel it under my nails, gritty and warm, can feel the sun on the back of my neck burning, and there's that smell—dry earth and dying roses and heat.I should get up. Should go inside. Wash my hands. The thought drifts through without landing anywhere.The light is changing. The brightness is fading, bleeding out at the edges. The roses lose their color first, turning gray, then the grass, then everything. Like watching a photograph develop in reverse. The world going pale. Going transparent.Wet.That's the first thing. Wet.My face is wet and I don't know why and I can't open my eyes yet. My mouth tastes strange. I try to swallow and my throat is dry. Where am I?I blink. Nothing happens. Try again. This time my lids separate slightly. My ceiling.The water stain in the corner. That crack. I've looked at that crack a thousand times.Home.I wipe my face. The blanket slides off me as I sit up. Kyle's at the other
MiaI'm kneeling in the garden now, though I don't remember deciding to kneel. One moment I was standing at the edge looking at the too-long grass, and the next my knees are pressing into the earth.The dirt under my fingernails. I don't notice it happening. I think about how I'll have to scrub them later with the nail brush, the one with the wooden handle that sits by the kitchen sink.My hands know what to do—wrap around the stem as close to the base as possible, feel for the resistance, pull straight up or dig deeper if it won't come. This is muscle memory from years of helping Mom in this garden.The dandelions come up with their long thick taproots, the kind that go down forever, searching for water in the drought. Sometimes they break off halfway and I can feel the snap in my fingers, that small vegetable violence.The crabgrass is harder—those shallow spreading roots that seem to go on forever, each clump revealing more, like pulling on a string and finding it attached to a wh
Mia I pull out another photo. This one is recent. Three weeks ago.My fingers catch on the glossy edge and for a second it sticks to the one beneath it, that static cling photos get when they've been stacked too long in a box. I have to peel them apart carefully.Madison in her school play. She's dressed as a tree. The costume is homemade—I can see the places where I rushed, where the hot glue strings show white against the brown poster board we wrapped around her middle for the trunk. Brown tights on her legs, the kind that bag a little at the knees because I bought them a size too big so she could wear them again.In the photo she's on stage, caught mid-performance under those harsh auditorium lights that wash out everyone's faces. She's standing perfectly still.She's not moving. Just being trees."She took it very seriously," I say.My voice sounds strange in my own ears. Distant. Like I'm hearing myself speak from the other end of a tunnel."Practiced standing still for days. S
Mia's POV"These are—" I open the box, and the cardboard edges are soft from years of handling, the corners worn down to a lighter brown. "These are things.""Things?""Moments." I lift the lid slowly, and inside there's chaos—photos stacked unevenly, some face-up, some face-down, ticket stubs from the aquarium, a dried flower from Madison's first school play pressed between two pictures, a tiny hospital bracelet. "Weird moments. Things that happened that I took pictures of because they were—" I search for the word, my fingers hovering over the pile. "Because they were them."I pull out the first photo, and I have to smile before I even hand it over. The edges are slightly sticky from where Alexander once got peanut butter on it."That's Alexander at two and a half." I pass it to Kyle. "He decided he was a dog."The photo shows Alexander on all fours on our old kitchen floor—the one with the yellow linoleum that came with the apartment. He's face-first in Gas's metal bowl, his cheeks







