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Dad told someone I hated his cooking, when the truth was that he kept putting mushrooms in everything, hoping I wouldn’t notice. Mouse claimed I never lost an argument, which wasn’t true either. I lost plenty. I just rarely admitted it.

I corrected them anyway. But no one laughed.

At the funeral, I stood beside Samuel while he stared at the casket and slipped his wedding ring from his finger and placed it on mine. My chest ached with a pain I hadn’t known could follow me here. I reached for his hand, though by then I already knew what would happen. My fingers passed through his, leaving mine curled around empty air.

I don’t remember being buried.

I remember Samuel leaving.

One moment, I was standing near the porch at Dad’s house, watching Knox follow him down the gravel drive. I stayed behind because I didn’t know whether I could go with him, and because some frightened part of me believed that choosing the wrong direction might separate us forever.

Then something pulled through me.

Not painfully or even forcefully. It felt more like the sudden tightening of a thread I’d forgotten was there.

The house disappeared.

Knox and my father disappeared. Suddenly, I was in Samuel’s truck.

For several seconds, I could only stare at the dashboard and the familiar crack running across the corner of the windshield. The trees lining the road rushed past us as Ashbourne began to disappear.

I looked back, though there was nothing for me to see beyond the rear window except pavement and distance.

“What happened?”

Samuel didn’t answer.

His hands were locked around the steering wheel, his knuckles pale against the worn leather. Something felt wrong. My eyes dropped to his left hand. His ring was gone.

The memory rushed back before I could stop it—Samuel slipping it from his finger at the funeral, his hand lingering over the casket for one last moment before he pulled it away.

Instinctively, I looked down at my own hand. A silver band caught the fading light filtering through the windshield.

His wedding ring.

It rested loosely against the base of my thumb. I curled my hand into a fist, the cool metal pressing gently against my skin.

I moved toward him.

“Wolf?”

Nothing.

The thread was no longer visible, but I could feel it somewhere inside me. A quiet pull. A connection that led me without asking whether I wanted to go.

Or perhaps it had known there was nowhere else I would choose.

Samuel drove without turning on the radio. He didn’t reach for his phone when it lit up in the cup holder, and he never glanced at the road signs announcing towns I’d never heard of. He simply kept moving, one hand occasionally slipping from the wheel before tightening around it again.

The sky was dark by the time he pulled into the parking lot of a motel with two letters missing from the glowing vacancy sign. He sat inside the truck long after turning off the engine, staring through the windshield as though he’d forgotten why he stopped.

His phone lit up again.

Knox.

Samuel flipped it face down without answering.

“Call him.” My voice meant nothing here, but I said it anyway. “Please, Sam. Just tell him where you are.”