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matted hair.  I hated being seen like this.
    Maybe it would have been better if I had died in that forest, or in that house in the woods.  Then my family could remember me the way I used to be.  Not this.  Just by being here, by ‘making it’, I sent my past to the grave along with my future.  My stomach clenched painfully and I curled into my mother even more.

Cha pter 6
    Dean
    It was time to break out the big guns.  I’d seen Christie sitting at the back porch of her house, staring into the distance, time after time.  We all had, every local police officer had taken shifts specifically guarding the Jayne residence.
    We parked out in the street and regularly did a patrol around the house, the rear garden of which backed on to a small forest with nothing separating it but a waist-high fence.  Officially we were on the lookout for anything suspicious, but the reality boiled down to chasing away nosy photographers.
    Oh, they were vocal about how they had the right to make life as tough as they possibly could for Christie, but they didn’t count on how far we’d go to protect one of our own.  They lost interest surprisingly quickly when the next big story came out.
    Captain Lewin let the Jaynes know it was probably safe to not keep the curtains closed all the time and that they could start easing back into a more normal life.  Shortly after that, Christie started spending her days on the back porch, and every time I saw her, it broke my heart.
    It looked like she was losing weight instead of gaining it, and her skin was so pale except for those bags under her eyes.  I was no doctor, but it looked like it was bad and getting worse.
    I’d tried to spark up conversations with her, but although she remembered my name after all these years without my needing to reintroduce myself, she didn’t really seem able to focus, and eventually she’d just go quiet and start staring out into that forest again.  There was no telling what she saw there, but I’d have wagered my monthly salary that it was nothing good.
    I thought about her every day, the beautiful girl from school and the haunted woman on the porch.  I thought about what her sister had said the day she came back and similar little comments her family continued to make.  Nobody, not her family, friends, or shrinks seemed to be getting through to her, and I couldn’t stand it.  Everywhere I went, I felt like a magnet was pulling at my very core, telling me to go to her.
    Today was my day off but I’d had a quick conversation with Rusty, who was on Jayne-duty, and confirmed that Christie was in her usual spot.  Five minutes later, I pulled up in front of their house.
    I walked around to the rear passenger door like the driver for some important businessman and opened it.  King leapt out, tennis ball in mouth, and immediately set off to sniff everything.
    “Hey.  Hey!  Get back here.”
    King came back, his jaws rapidly opening and closing on his prize to adjust his grip, or to kill it, or whatever it is dogs think about doing to tennis balls.  I dropped to one knee as if I was a coach giving a pep talk.
    “Sit.  OK, King, big day.”  I put my hands on his sides to hold his attention.  “Now, I think we can both agree that I don’t ask for much.  The time you ate my shoelaces, I didn’t get mad, did I?  I did not.  I give you everything you need, and even when you were a puppy I never took you to the park to help me pick up chicks.  You’ve had it easy.  You know that, right?”
    King’s eyes shifted from left to right, and then back to me with an expression that said something along the lines of ‘good grief, man.’
    “I’m taking you to meet somebody.  Somebody special, King.  There’s nobody like her in the whole world.  Best behavior, she really needs a friend right now.  Here, ball.”
    I tried to grab the ball in King’s mouth, and he growled as if he was going to tear my arm off.
    “Fine, keep it, but if you pull any of