Brody stopped his Subaru on a spray of gravel and was out of it practically before it came completely halted.

“You ain’t answerin’ your cell and your line’s f**kin’ engaged,” he accused Max the instant he cleared the door.

“What –?” Max started but Brody interrupted him.

“You seen Mindy?” he asked, his eyes were locked on Max but I felt something grip my insides, something vicious.

“No, why?” Max answered, I heard his tone had an edge and watched Becca pull in behind Brody’s Subaru.

“She call?” Brody went on. He’d walked swiftly and come to a stop in front of Max and me. His face was a stony mask of worry.

“No, Brody, what’s happening?” Max replied. His body had gone tight and alert at my side.

“You?” Brody turned to me. “See or hear from her?”

I shook my head and said, “No.”

“Jesus, Brody, what the f**k’s happening?” Max asked, his voice getting hard, not with anger, with what I saw in Brody’s face.

Brody reached behind him and pulled a folded piece of paper out of the back pocket of his jeans as Becca made it to us and Jeff was jogging up.

“Slipped that under the door to her apartment while I was out this mornin’,” Brody told Max as he handed him the paper.

But I was staring at Becca’s face and Becca was staring at the paper like it was going to grow claws and strike out at her and that grip on my insides not only tightened, it twisted.

I forced my eyes away from Becca, looked down at the paper in Max’s hand and read.

Brody,

I know what you’re going to think but you don’t know.

I can’t get clean.

And I need to get clean.

Every time I think I can go back to who I was before, I think I can forget, I think I can go forward, it fills my head and I remember how dirty I am.

I need to get clean.

And I know how.

After last night, I know I can do it. I’ve been thinking about it and no time seemed to be the right time but I know I can do it now.

You told me you were happy in your job, you love Seattle and Mom and Dad are moving to Arizona and they’ve wanted to do that for so long. And Max found Nina and she’s sweet and they’re happy together. So I can do it now, everyone I love is happy. I know now it’s all good.

We had such a great night last night, the perfect ending, now I can go.

Tell Becca not to be mad at me and tell her I listened all those times we talked but she doesn’t get it either. She doesn’t understand what it feels like to wash and wash and wash and never feel clean.

So I’m going to the only place that can make me clean, crystal clear, fresh and clean.

You don’t be mad at me either, Brody. Please try to understand.

Tell Mom and Dad, Max and Becca I love them, okay?

And I love you too.

xoxo Mins

“It’s a suicide note,” Becca whispered but I knew that. I knew it. I knew it reading it and I knew it because I’d stopped breathing and I knew it because I’d read one before and I knew it because that grip on my insides felt like a vice and I felt that before too. “She talked about it to me, I asked her to go see someone.” Becca’s voice dropped to nearly nothing. “She promised she would.”

“We got boys high and low lookin’ for her,” Jeff put in and his voice sounded tight.

I felt Mom, Steve and Cotton had gotten close but they stayed quiet, correctly reading the atmosphere.

I didn’t look at anyone. I was simply staring at the note still held up in Max’s hand.

“Fuck!” Brody hissed. “She was okay last night, laughin’, eatin’, drinkin’ –”

“Crystal clear and fresh,” I whispered, cutting Brody off.

“What?” Max asked and I watched the note disappear as his hand dropped away and his body turned to me as his arm curled me to his front.

I looked up into Max’s handsome face wearing a replica of Brody’s stony concern. “Crystal clear and fresh,” I repeated. “She said that to me when I was giving her a facial. She used those words to describe someplace she really likes, someplace on the river. She said the water was always clear there, you could always see right down to the bottom. Crystal clear and –”

“Holling’s Bend,” Max said, his neck twisting to look at Brody and then he suddenly let me go and he was running.

Not thinking, I ran with him, Brody did too, around the house and up the incline toward the barn.

Brody was yelling as he ran. “Jeff, take the road, scan the river as you go!”

They pulled ahead and I watched Max yank open the barn door on a mighty heave and disappear inside. I ran into the cold darkness to see him squatting in front of an open cupboard door. He twisted a knob on a safe, pulled it open and I saw some keys hanging inside. He grabbed a set, turned and tossed them to Brody. Brody caught them and ran to an ATV. Max grabbed another set and ran to the other ATV.

He got on and, as he was slipping the key into the ignition, I climbed on behind him.

He twisted and clipped, “Nina.”

“Go!” I yelled. “Go, go, go!”

He delayed no further, twisted back, started the ATV, turned sharply in the barn and shot out behind Brody.

Max either was more experienced on the ATV or knew the terrain better, maybe both, but even with me holding tight to his waist, we passed Brody. The wind, chill on the ATV and me not wearing a jacket, whipped our bodies and hair and we were going fast, too fast, scary fast and I didn’t notice.

The wheels left earth as we flew over a rise then landed with a bone-jarring thud which made me glad I was holding onto Max for dear life. We barreled down it, heading toward the narrow, now muddy track running the side of the river that Max and I took on the snowmobile.

My heart in my throat hammering uncontrollably, I scanned the river as it flew by at our sides.

My eyes were on the river but my mind was on Mindy putting her hand to my window and giving me that funny, little smile. That funny, little smile I was too stupid, stupid, stupidly drunk to read. Max had asked me to take it easy on the drink, he’d told me she had bad moments, I’d even bloody seen them. But did I listen, did I read the signs, signs I’d seen but didn’t read before with Charlie?

No. No, I didn’t.

Then we neared the bend and I saw her. Max did too.