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“Like what?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Canada geese? Woofarine?”

I laughed at the Woofarine comment.

“Geese are birds. Nobody’s getting killed by geese,” I said.

“So you think you could take a pissed off Canada goose?” she asked. “They’re cobra chickens.”

“I’m not saying it’d be a good time, but yeah.”

“What if there was a whole flock of them?”

“There’s a better chance at surviving a massive goose attack than an organized deer ambush. Not to mention geese are a seasonal threat and deer are here daily, living amongst us, patrolling our lawns while we’re asleep.”

“Something tells me you’ve never met the business end of a Canada goose. You’re waaaay too cocky.”

I smiled. “I want you to know that I’d put myself between you and a deer, and you and a goose for that matter, because that’s just the kind of guy I am, but know that I’d be terrified.”

“Well, it’s not brave if you’re not scared.” She shook her head, still cracking up.

I smiled, looking at her a moment longer than I should. She had a little dimple. I remembered the first time I noticed it, the night we met. Barefoot, hanging off Lexi’s back. Fun. Easygoing.

Her blond hair had been wavy from the humidity of the crowd. Not frizzy. Like a day spent on the beach. And she’d been so vibrant, that beaming grin she always had, despite all the crappy things I know she deals with—a shitty dad, all that debt, and all the jobs she works to pay it off.

I don’t know that I’d be as good of a person if the world had treated me the way it treated her. Even out here, lost and hot and tired and sunburned, she was positive and making the best of it.

Last week, I’d gone to her place to pick up Woofarine. Larissa was out babysitting, so Nancy let me in and wrangled me into talking for a few minutes. I was sitting there drinking an off-brand soda, chatting with her mom, looking around, and I could feel Larissa in every inch of that apartment. Larissa was like a flower planted in a garbage heap. She made this run-down place somehow feel bright and homey. There was a rainbow afghan Nancy said Larissa had made, draped over the couch, vases she thrifted, secondhand furniture she’d upcycled in the living room. She was so talented—and I don’t think she ever sat still. I know it probably didn’t feel like it right now, but Larissa was going to succeed, regardless of what life threw at her. Despite it. I think she would defy what takes most people down in the end because she had the ability to shrug things off and keep going. Keep smiling.

Life buries us. We get heavier and heavier as time goes on and we labor under the layers we’ve collected. Sometimes the layers make us who we are and sometimes they make us someone else entirely.

I wondered if what had happened to Mom started like that. Small and thin and it piled on until she didn’t recognize herself.

And I didn’t even know she was gone until it was too late.

I must have been quiet.

“What’s wrong?” Larissa said from next to me.

I shook my head. “Nothing. I’m just thinking about my mom.”

She waited. I almost didn’t go on, but for some reason here in the middle of nowhere, I felt like I could. Like maybe I could leave it here in the woods and walk out without it.

“She died in a way that I’m having a hard time processing,” I said.

“What happen—”

Woofarine veered hard to the left after something in the grass. He caught it. And the moment went from calm to chaos in a split second.

It was a snake. A very big snake. Larissa started screaming.

I pulled the leash, but he took the snake with him.

“Woofarine! Oh my God!” Larissa yelled. “Let it go! Chris, get him!”

“I’m trying!”

He was moving so fast I had to pick him up by the harness, hoping he’d drop it. He didn’t. Woofarine dangled there, four feet off the ground, shaking the snake and snarling like a honey badger.