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armpits and twisted my hair into something resembling an updo. I was pulling the third dress on the bed over my head when Len started pounding on the door.
    “Did you see something?” he stage-whispered through the door. When one of us had a vision, the other usually felt it if we were nearby.
    I yanked the door open, and he stumbled inside. “What’s with your hair? Is that like rooster-chic?”
    “Have I ever told you how helpful you are?” I asked, pitching the bobby pins across the room.
    “So, what was it?”
    “Go ahead,” I said, pointing to the dress. “A funeral.”
    “Who?”
    I was midshrug when Len grabbed my hand and placed his other on the dress. Together we could see things more in depth, and he hadn’t drank enough whiskey yet that evening to nullify his Foresight.
    This time it was easier to slide into the vision, but the tone was darker, too. We were quiet as we searched out the crowd. It was a silent service, devoid of the usual sweet song—instead, the Deacon, Cal’s brother, who would have been leading the music, was doubled over in tears, their best friend, Sheriff Jayne, stony at his side. I swallowed back a sob, not having considered the casket could have belonged to Cal. Len squeezed my hand and the vision shifted forward in time—maybe a couple of weeks—with a sickening jolt.
    A small woman, her back to us, sat white-knuckled in the driver’s seat of a modified sedan as the vehicle climbed rough sections of pavement and scree. Over the sound of the motor, she was belting out a song I’d never heard in a voice akin to that of a raccoon caught in a trap. The vision jolted forward again and she was sleeping, circled by the wild animals of the night, and guarded by starlight. And again: the woman exiting the off-ramp of the interstate—a highway Len and I had never been more than twenty miles down in either direction—and her car belched a cloud of something gray and crept to a halt. This time, we could see her face. I gasped.
    “Syd,” Len said. “Poor, poor Syd.”
    Syd had loved us back when we were children, but we were different even then. When we’d talk about the Spirit, she’d screw up her face and wave us off. Once, when still the best of friends, I asked her to tell me where she thought our visions came from. I think maybe I wanted her to come right out and call me a liar. But she only said she didn’t know. She said it like she wanted to believe me. What would she say now, all these years later, when I told her I’d seen her coming from miles and days away?
    “I can’t believe she’s coming back,” I said. “Do you think we should ride out for her?”
    Len nodded. “Probably not a bad idea.”
    “We have to. What if that Survivor camp finds her?”
    “Cas, she is a Survivor.”
    I was silent for a minute. “It won’t be the same, will it?”
    “They say you can never go home again,” Len said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
    “Guess it’s a good thing we never left.”

    Mama’s lips pursed at our arrival into the parlor. She looked me up and down and sighed. On the other side of the room, the Governor and the Bishop had their heads bent together. Our oldest brother, Perry, had his nose buried in a musty-looking copy of The Art of War , while Troy bobbed, aimless, between the two sides of the room. Len turned traitor and left me to Mama.
    I tried to sail past her, but her hand shot out around my wrist, and yanked me to her side. “Land sakes, child, did you even think to brush your hair?” She pulled a bobby pin from her own chignon, and after a few yanks and twists had made my ponytail into something more flattering. I let out a whimper as she jabbed a last pin into my head.
    She sighed. “You may be the baby in this family, Casandra, but you needn’t act like one.”
    When I was younger, I tried and tried to explain my love of the dirt and the sun and Windy and all the rest of it. She had said, “A lady can still be a lady on a ranch.”