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SERENA:

She was also the person I thought would be there for everything.

I didn’t consciously think that, obviously. At sixteen, you don’t generally look at your best friend and perform a longitudinal projection of the relationship. You just assume.

College. Jobs. Weddings, if either of us decided to participate in the institution. Children, if applicable. Bad haircuts. Divorces. Funerals. Whatever came next.

Casey was built into my understanding of the future.

And then one day she wasn’t in it.

[pause]

I think that’s why this matters so much. Why I need it to be me and not just some random person.

I have spent most of my adult life studying what remains of people after everything else is gone. I can estimate age from skeletal development. I can examine trauma. I can look at the places where muscle repeatedly pulled against bone and tell you something about how a person used their body while they were alive.

But Casey taught me, long before I knew any of that, that a person is more than the evidence they leave behind.

She is not a case number.

She is not a missing-person poster.

She is not the worst thing that happened to her.

She was my best friend.

And whatever I am professionally allowed to say about this investigation, I can say this:

She deserves to be known for more than disappearing.

And she deserves to be more than an unanswered question.

13

INDICATORS OF COMPROMISED CONDITION

SERENA

Ihave been standing in the parking lot of the inn with Baryn for what feels like a small eternity.

There is no practical reason for this.

Tamsin disappeared inside almost immediately after we returned, citing an urgent need to remove her bra. Simon followed less than a minute later with the equipment cases, leaving Baryn and me beside his car with nothing left to carry, discuss, or otherwise justify our continued presence under the last aggressive stretch of afternoon sunlight.

And yet, neither of us has moved.

I should probably be more concerned about the interview. For nearly an hour, I sat across from Baryn and told him things about Casey I haven’t said aloud in years. Things I’m not entirely certain I’ve ever said aloud. I did this while three separate recording devices preserved every word for eventual distribution to thousands of strangers, which should have made honesty considerably more difficult. Instead, somewhere between his first question and the moment I forgot there was a microphone between us, it stopped feeling like an interview.

It felt like talking to Baryn.

Being around him is too easy. Talking to him is worse. He asks questions I should resent and then waits for the answers without trying to fill the silence for me. He notices when I’m uncomfortable but doesn’t immediately attempt to make the discomfort disappear. He makes room for it. For me. And that is all it takes to dismantle years of carefully maintained emotional containment, because I told a man—who broadcasts conversations for a living—things I’ve successfully avoided discussing with people who have known me for a lifetime.

Baryn’s phone vibrates in his hand. He glances at the screen, and several things happen to his face at once—an immediate flash of excitement followed so closely by apprehension that I almost miss the transition. His thumb hovers over the notification without tapping it.

I entertain a fleeting interest in his mother’s livestock, and briefly wonder what kind of agricultural crisis she's managed to cook up at this time of day.

Finally, he answers the call.