Peter strokes my hair. His arms are around me. I feel the warmth of his bare chest as I sob against him. He doesn’t speak, and I am grateful for that.

At last, I can breathe again.

“She’s dying,” I say.

His grip tightens around me, and I realize he thinks I mean Claire.

“My mother. She’s dying.” I’ve never said that word out loud. I’ve said she’s sick, that she needs me, but not that word, dying. “Claire ran from the Missing Man because she isn’t lost anymore and I still am. I thought she’d come here.”

“And lo, the prodigal savior returns to take again from me,” Peter says. He has a mocking grin on his lips, but there’s no laughter in his eyes. His hands are still tight on my arms, almost enough to bruise. “If you had found what you lost, would you have left Claire?”

“I’d have made sure she was okay.”

“You could be happy here,” Peter says. “You have a home. You have family. You have safety, food, water, shelter. I have given this all to you.”

I don’t know what to say. His eyes are intense, and I am too close to him. I can feel his heartbeat through my shirt. His skin is warm. He’s looking at me as if he wants to kiss me or devour me and hasn’t decided which. “Will you help me find Claire?”

He releases me, and I stagger backward. Throwing my hand out, I catch my balance on the tree. The nooses sway from the impact, and the Christmas lights twinkle and shift. He says softly, “‘If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were.’ When you came to my door, I thought—” Cutting himself off, he turns his back to me and faces the tree with the tiny nooses. “She wouldn’t run to where he can find her,” he says. “She’d run to where she’s more lost.”

He waits for me to understand. After a moment, I do. “The void,” I say. He knocks the nooses with his finger, sends them swinging faster. I know I’m right. “Can you bring her out? I...I’ve found things. I’ve never found people.”

“She chose it.”

“Knowing that you’d find her,” I say. “She trusts you.” I take a deep breath. “So do I.”

He looks at me, and his eyes look sad. He favors me with half a smile, a twist of his lips. “But you trust the Missing Man to send you home, even after he betrayed you and left you. You want to leave.”

“Everyone here wants to go home,” I say.

“I am home,” he says.

“Please, Peter.” I reach out and put my hand on his arm. “Help me.”

He stares into my eyes. I can feel his breath soft on my face. He leans his forehead against mine. “I know what you’ve lost,” he says. His voice sounds broken, as if the words cost him.

Suddenly, I feel as though I can’t breathe. My hand shakes. It’s still on his arm, and I know he can feel it shaking. My whole body trembles. “Where is it?” My voice is a whisper.

He taps my sternum, his fingers close to my heart. “It isn’t in the void. It’s in here.”

“Can you be less cryptic?” I ask.

He smiles but there’s sadness in the smile this time. “I can’t. Fairly certain it was a mistake to tell you that much.” Lightly, his fingers brush my cheek. “Really, you don’t seem like you should be interesting. What is it about you? You’re just like everyone else. Can’t wait to leave me.” His lips lightly brush against mine, and then he grips my arms and kisses me, his body pressed tight against me. I feel the warmth of his bare chest through the thin cotton of my shirt. I kiss him back, sinking into his arms, and for an instant, my thoughts scatter and there’s only this moment right here.

But then I break away. “Claire.”

“I’ll find her, if that’s what you wish.”

“It is,” I say firmly, though my lips still tingle and my head is spinning.

Leaving me, he sprints out of the apartment without another word.

Sitting in one of the chairs, I stare at the tree with nooses. Then hopping to my feet, I pace. I think about Peter, about Claire, about the Missing Man... I have to tell Victoria and Sean that he’s returned. Also Tiffany. And the others. They can go home now. Or move on. Or whatever. And then Claire and I will join them.

I raid Peter’s closets, searching for a reasonable disguise. I find a knit hat and a hoodie. I pull it on and tuck my hair into the hat and use the hood to shield my face in shadows. It’s not perfect, but if I slouch like Colin and if I don’t make eye contact...

I can’t simply stay here and wait. I have to move. I have to go. I can’t...I just can’t.

My mother is dying.

Hands jammed into my pockets, I shuffle down the sidewalk and try to look inconspicuous. I haven’t been to the center of Lost since I was driven out, and Main Street hasn’t improved much. All the buildings look one hard breath away from crumbling into rubble. Piles of garbage lean against them. The sidewalk concrete is chopped and full of weeds that choke every available crack.

I already regret coming.

I see kids in the alleyways, perched in and around Dumpsters and on towers of cardboard boxes. In one alley, they’ve constructed a wall of old doors and signs. A few of them watch me.

The Moonlight Diner sign blinks at me in the distance, only three blocks away. I can make it, I think. From there, Victoria and Sean will spread the word.

A woman in a filthy pink tracksuit lurches out of one house. She’s holding a dead bird in one hand, tight around the neck. She stumbles across the street into an alley. Another woman on hands and knees plants dead flowers in a manicured bed of soil and mulch. She’s humming to herself.

Two blocks to the diner.

I should have waited for Peter. I should have insisted the Missing Man come with me. I should have waited for Victoria’s next visit, or for the next person to come seeking help.

The Missing Man still owes me an explanation—why he fled in the first place, what he’s been doing, why he knows anything about my mother’s condition, and why he came back to tell me. I should be back at the house, badgering answers out of the Missing Man, instead of here trying to save everyone that I’d ever met...except that’s exactly why I’m here, isn’t it? I want to save everyone I can. Maybe then I’ll be able to find a way to save the one who mattered most.

Jesus, I have got to stop with the psychoanalysis. I’m annoying myself.

At last, I walk up the steps to the diner. The bell over the door rings as I enter, and everyone turns to look at me as I walk in. Victoria drops a plate of food. It shatters on the floor.

I slide into one of the booths. Pick up a menu. Wave at Victoria as if she were only a waitress, not someone I know. She steps over the broken glass and then stands by my booth. Her pad and pen are in her hand.

“He’s back,” I say.

All of them...Victoria, Sean, and the customers...file out of the diner behind me. I feel like the Pied Piper. I hear the whispers and then more footsteps. Others have joined us. I don’t turn around as I lead them into the alleys.

It feels as if there’s a swarm of bees following me. Docile for now, but they might not stay that way. I’m ending my anonymity and the safety of my home. Once all these people know...but it won’t be my home much longer. I don’t have to protect it. It’s over. I only have to complete the loop, finish what I began, and make amends for driving away the Missing Man in the first place by saving everyone that I can.

And somehow, find a way to say goodbye to Peter.

I feel my heart crumble as I think it. I knew this would come, that we weren’t and couldn’t be permanent, but still...the thought of not seeing him when I wake, of not hearing his laugh, of never... I won’t think about it right now.

As we emerge from the alleys into the outskirts of town, I glance over my shoulder. I see nearly fifty people—men, women, and kids. Some are following with wide-eyed, beatific expressions on their faces, pilgrims to the holy land. They’re coming to meet their messiah, so to speak. Others don’t have the glow. They make me nervous.