"I know where she is," Kristen said.
Jolene looked at her sharply. "Where?"
"Somewhere I used to take her." Kristen was already moving toward the door. "Stay with Tanner. Keep Brock here."
"He'll want to come."
"I know he will," Kristen said. "That's why he's staying."
Hollis had changed and not changed. The canning plant was a self-storage place now. The Rexall on Main was a vape shop. The road out to Lindell Reservoir was the same washboard gravel it had always been, and her little sedan rattled over it with its headlights jumping, and when she came around the last bend and saw the overlook lot empty she felt something drop out of the bottom of her.
Then she saw the figure on the concrete bench by the fence, and she remembered how to breathe.
Shelby was sitting with her knees pulled up and her arms around them, in a Cedar Hollow sweatshirt and sweatpants and a pair of shower slides. No coat. In the spill of the headlights, her face was thinner than at Easter, her hair, the same blonde as Kristen's but darker at the roots, pulled into a knot. She didn't startle when the car stopped. She raised one hand against the glare, and then she lowered it, slowly, and Kristen saw that she knew who it was.
Kristen turned off the engine and the lights. The roar of the spillway rushed in to fill the silence, steady and enormous. Like applause. Like the whole world clapping.
She got out of the car. She took off her grey zip jacket as she walked, and when she reached the bench she held it out. Shelby looked at it. Then she took it and put it on and zipped it to her chin.
Kristen sat down on the other end of the bench. Between them was about three feet of cold concrete, and in that space, Kristen understood, was the rest of their lives.
"Brock told you," Shelby said. Her voice was hoarse.
"Jolene called the phone. I answered it."
Shelby laughed, a short broken sound, and wiped her nose on the sleeve of Kristen's jacket. "The phone. God. He bought it at a Walmart in Hollis the day he drove me up. He said it was so you wouldn't see my name come up. He said it like it was a really clever idea. He was so proud of it. He's such a—" She stopped. "He's good, Kris. He was so good to me."