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The rolling countryside beyond my taxi’s window looks suspended in hibernation—the trees are a sea of bare, brittle branches, and the hills are brown and yellow, the sky a nondescript shade of gray. It is a landscape closed up for the winter.

I don’t realize I’ve arrived at Charlotte’s family farm until I’m almost right on top of it. The driver almost misses the turn before I spot the handwritten signpost that says Lawrences → along the side of the road.

Her family must have moved so recently that the new owners haven’t even removed the post.

I get out of the car, but don’t head toward the farmhouse itself. Instead, I walk in a wide arc around to the back of the property, where a gentle hill slopes down into a valley that leads out to the mountains in the distance. Even through the gray haze of winter, it is a beautiful sight—a low, weak sun, a landscape of forest shrouded in fog.

I see Katie first, a lanky silhouette standing against a grove of thin trees, her city coat a stark contrast to the backdrop. So she came, too. Maybe she was already here when I called her.

She waves me over. As I approach, I finally see Charlotte sitting under the trees, her back to me, her gaze pointed out at the horizon.

“Hey, Cookie,” I say, slightly out of breath.

Charlotte doesn’t answer. Her puffy coat is slightly too small for her, her skinny wrists jutting out from the sleeves, goose bumps on her skin from the chill. I know that this must be a coat that her parents had once gotten for her, one she can’t quite part with.

Beside her, Katie gives me a nod. “You hear from Étienne yet?” she asks quietly.

I shake my head. “He still isn’t answering,” I reply. “I’m guessing you haven’t talked to him either.”

“He goes dark sometimes,” she says with a shrug. “Usually when he’s been sent on some sort of intense job. He’ll turn up.”

It doesn’t feel right to me, but I want to believe her, so I just nod and turn my attention down to Charlotte.

“They left last week,” Katie tells me in a low voice. “Charlotte sensed their location change, so I came with her down here to investigate.”

I head over to her, then crouch to take a seat at the base of the trees beside her. She still doesn’t look at me, but she scoots aside to give me some space.

After a while, she says, “Dad and I planted these trees.” She briefly leans back to tap the trunk behind her. “Yellow birch, native to the Carolinas. A month ago, they were probably still covered with golden leaves. I used to check on them every day, fussing over the saplings and whatnot, until Dad told me to stop messing with them. Let nature be, he always said. She knows better than us.”

A month ago, when her family must have started packing for their move.

I turn my face toward the trees’ bare winter branches and try to imagine them in all their golden brilliance. You must have been able to see this cluster all the way from the bottom of the road.

“Do you know where they moved to?” I ask.

Charlotte turns her head toward a different part of the horizon. Her voice is cold today, sharp around the edges in a way that doesn’t sound like her at all. “They went all the way west. San Francisco.”

They had given up the farm, all the places where Charlotte used to play by the creek and climb the trees, the black earth under her feet and the rain on their roof, the living room where Charlotte used to snuggle with her mother for movie nights and where her dad used to teach her card games. They had given all of that up, because for them, none of it had ever happened. Because everything had been erased from their memories and lives.

“Do you know why they left?” I ask.

Charlotte gets up and dusts off her pants. “They’re having a baby,” she says quietly without looking at me.

A lump rises in my throat. I open my mouth but can’t think of the right thing to say.

“Cookie—” I manage, but she just shoves her hands in her pockets and starts marching back down the hill.

As I watch her go, Katie leans closer to me. “I got ahold of the real estate agent,” she says. “They said they didn’t like the erosion of the cliffside. Said it was dangerous, that an accident was bound to happen, and they didn’t want their new little girl near there.”

As if they knew what had happened to Charlotte. Even if they don’t remember her, she is in some part of their hearts all the same. A ghost in their periphery. Maybe they left because, unconsciously, they have always been grieving her. Maybe they no longer want her anchoring them to this land. They miss her, even if they don’t know what they are missing.

Because they have a new daughter to care for, to fill the mysterious hole in their hearts.

“Did you tell her what the agent said about the cliffside?” I ask.

Katie shakes her head, then starts heading down the hill after Charlotte. “No,” she says as I follow alongside her. “But does it matter? Somehow, I think she knows.”

As Charlotte nears the edge of the trees, we catch up to her.