Crouch, Michael: But now the word felt like a friend he couldn't unmake, always popping up to embarrass him, discredit him. "I'm not confused," Kane said. "I'm just trying to clear my name." Sophia rubbed a smudge of sap on her palm. "Well, you're doing a shitty job." She was right. He had been acting pretty terrible since the accident; avoidant, gloomy, brittle. But these were things Kane had always been. It was just now people were looking to him for explanations. They wanted answers or at least to see a brave survivor of something terrible. Instead, they saw Kane; avoidant, gloomy, brittle. No one liked it. "I heard mom say that Detective Thistler is doing a psych evaluation with you today," said Sophia. "They're going to ask you a lot of questions, Kane."

"They've already asked me a lot of questions, Sophia." "You might consider attempting a few answers this time. For instance, why?" "Why what?" Sophia glared at him. "Why did you drive a car into that historical site?" Staring across the lot at the charred remains of the old mill, Kane's mind went blank. He'd spent every minute since waking up wondering the same thing. Sophia went on, "Mom said the police won't press charges while you're being evaluated. But I heard that the county might prosecute." The whole County? Everyone, all at once? Kane imagined the entire population of East Amity, Connecticut piled into a jury box. It made him smile.

Another pine cone struck his shoulder. He trudged back to the bank letting his feet dry on the baking pavement as Sophia took pictures of the bridge. Then his feet were dry, and he couldn't stall any longer. "All right, let's make this quick," he said as he pulled on his boots. "I just need to poke around the crash site. Keep taking pictures. Okay?" "Are you sure it's safe to go in there?" They stared the mill. Kane shrugged. It definitely wasn't safe. Half imploded, the mill sat quarantined behind a web of caution tape.

Behind it, rising through the young birch forest stood the rest of the old industrial complex, a maze of abandoned factories and warehouses that represented the height of East Amity's manufacturing era that went on for miles proud and forever slowly decaying beneath neglect as the forest grew up under them. This place was called the Cobalt complex. This building before them, the old mill that looked onto the river was the crash site, the crime scene, that cherished bit of Connecticut history Kane had rammed a Volvo into which then exploded one week ago. He didn't even think cars really exploded on impact. That was movie stuff, yet the mill then everything within 50 feet of it was scorched. Kane laced up his brown, leather boots. The old mill was a symbol of East Amity appearing in the watercolor postcard sold all around town.

Kane imagined the watercolor version of his crash, the dotted glass on the pavement. The inferno rendered in pale tasteful shades of apricots, greasy, smoke eddying upward in violent, lovely twists against the restrained lavender of sunrise. Very pretty, very new England. "Come on, Kane, focus," said Sophia as she dragged him onto the tape. No new memories came to him in the chilled shade of the mill. Instead came an itch, the sort that simmers through your veins, an instinct that had been crawling beneath Kane's skin since they got here. It said, "You should not have come back." Kane stood his ground. He needed answers and he needed them now. "Remember anything?" "No." Sophia sighed. She prodded a blackened beam. "Try harder," she suggested. "Use your imagination." Kane willed himself calm. He tested his weight on the sloping staircase. The fifth step let out a groan, but it held. I think that using my imagination is the opposite of what I should be doing.