SONYA
Whenever I had a free moment to stare out the open window, to observe the cottonwood fluff ball up on my desk, I would feel a stab of anxiety and fear: for a while, at night, before I fell asleep I’d been sensing something beyond the surface of the investigation. There was something else hidden behind the teenage murder-suicide on the Great Stone Bridge, something dark, large, and rock-solid that sat in our path and forced us to dig around it. I told myself it was just the fact of a different time and different people’s lives, but in the bright June nights, I couldn’t shake off the sickening apprehension. There was a reason no one wanted to remember this very romantic story, not a single person agreed to help, no one spoke directly.
Best-case scenario, I thought, washing fresh cher
