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A reflective white arrow pointed in the direction of the hidden turnoff on the only sign I'd seen in the last half hour. The blinker clicked on, and I let the car drift onto the gravel track that disappeared into the trees. Almost immediately, the silence grew thick in that way I remembered, making my ears feel like they needed to pop. It was an eerie absence of sound that resonated around the car, broken only by the crack of rocks under the tires.

The light had changed, too, adding to the stillness. The canopy far above diffused the sun into nothing more than glowing, golden air that hovered, suspended between the trees. The whole scene gave the innate feeling that you were leaving the world behind, entering into some imaginary place that didn't really exist. I wished that were true.

The blue dot blinking on the dash's GPS crept along the hairpin-turn road, deeper and deeper into the sea of green that covered the screen. The national forest was almost completely uninhabited by people except for the town that lay at its center. The map took me around turn after turn until the trees began to spread out just enough to reveal a house here and there. They were almost camouflaged against the colors of the landscape, with moss-covered roofs and wood-plank siding that was dotted with pine knots. The little red pin on the map crept closer until the cabin finally came into view.

The car rolled to a stop and I went stiff in my seat, eyes pinned to the old blue 4Runner parked out front. A nauseous, liquid feeling pooled in my belly as I shifted the gear into park. The cabin we'd grown up in was tiny, with two square windows that looked out at the road and a screen door that had once been painted a rust red. Pine needles that looked at least a foot deep were piled up around the porch like drifts of snow. As soon as I opened the car door, I could smell them.

My stomach turned a little as I let my eyes drift to the next house up the road. Set back in the trees, at the end of a long blacktop drive, was the Walkers' place. The windows were dark, the drive empty, but it still looked lived in. Looking at it almost made me feel like I was right back there again—eighteen years old and no idea that everything was about to change.

I forced my gaze back to our cabin, but it took a few seconds for my foot to lift and touch down on the ground. It took much longer for me to actually get out. Almost immediately, I could feel my brother spilling from inside the walls of the house we grew up in, thickening in the air around me.

"I'm here, Johnny," I breathed.

My hand clenched painfully around my keys as I rounded the car and got my bag, slinging it over my shoulder. My reflection moved over the windows of the 4Runner, and flashes of my younger self were there, behind the glass. Riding in the passenger seat with Johnny driving and Micah in the back. Flying down the highway sipping a lukewarm soda with music blaring from the only speaker that wasn't busted. I could see my bare feet propped up on the dash and catch the scent of burning oil leaking through the air vents.

I stepped up onto the porch, eyeing a fluttering square of white behind the screen door where something was taped to the window. I pulled the handle, and the springs creaked and popped as the door opened. It was a folded piece of paper with my name written on the front.

I opened it, reading the handwritten script.

My spine straightened when I saw the name. Amelia Travis was one of the rangers stationed in the national forest, a replacement for the decades-long tenure of Timothy Branson, who'd had the position in our town when I was growing up. The purview of the ranger who occupied the U.S. National Forest office mostly entailed things like permits and protections and land management. But they were also the closest thing we'd had to law enforcement, which meant that Johnny's death ultimately had fallen into Amelia Travis's jurisdiction.

She'd been the one to call me that day. I could still clearly remember the nothingness that had seized my body as the woman's words buzzed against my ear. Like every inch of empty space in the universe had hollowed me out. It was still there, a chasm that had no end, no edges.

I refolded the paper and lifted the mat, finding the rusted key that had been kept there for decades. It took a few tries to turn it in the lock, and I had to shove my shoulder into the door to get it open. But when it did, that chasm within me stretched so wide the whole earth could fall into it.

The presence that had hovered around the cabin was so heavy on the other side of the door that it knocked the wind from my lungs. My brother was like a gathering smoke in the air, choking out the oxygen. Like at any second, I'd hear him call my name from the other room.

His voice echoed inside of me and I pinched my eyes closed, trying to push the overwhelming feeling down. I'd waited for that tether between me and Johnny to dim after I got the news that he was gone. I was sure that at some point, it would grow thin as he pulled away from this world. But the hope I'd held on to that I would walk through that door and finally begin to sense his absence was a point of fading light now. He was still here. He was still everywhere.