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likely drowned.
    "Drowned?" Hannah asked.
    "Yes. A wetting agent, some kind of soap residue, was present in the tox report."
    "Soap?"
    Dr. Kent paused a moment. "I'd say Mr. Bubble, if I had to guess without a full analysis. I've seen it before."

    With her husband asleep, making the kind of muffled snores that had never irritated her until that night, Hannah grabbed her pillow and dragged her tired body to the sofa. Couldn't sleep. So tired. It ran around her head like a pinball in one of those old-school arcade machines Amber liked to play. The mantel clock chimed at one. She knew that in an hour the numbers would increase. There would be no sleep, only the wait for the chimes. She took the clock from above the fireplace and carried it to the kitchen, sliding the pocket door as she returned to the couch. There , she thought, at least that will silence the clock. She pulled a knit throw around her shoulders and slumped against the arm of the camel-back. She scrunched up in a ball as the tears began to fall. She remembered the smoke, and like the flash of a camera an image of cedar boughs and piles of gilded pinecones came to her. She pressed her palms into her eyes to stop the images. And for a second, it worked. But when the images resumed, it was the box in the Safeway bag that came to her mind. She remembered unfolding the brown paper and lifting the lid to peer inside. She hadn't touched the contents, but had stared at two pairs of little shoes that nestled in the folds of tissue and packing peanuts.
    She turned on the television. In a half hour she was able, somehow, to escape her memories. She heard the toilet flush and her husband's footsteps come down the hall. He turned on the light.
    "Honey, are you all right?" Ethan stood over her in his Jockey shorts and T-shirt. His whisker-stubbled face was awash with concern.
    "Can't sleep, that's all," she said quickly.
    "Headache?" Ethan turned on the lamp, running past the brightest wattage back to the lowest light.
    "A little," she said, flinching as the light took over the room. Her face was red and blotchy and her eyes puffy from her tears. She turned her head away, but it was too late.
    Ethan moved closer. "Hannah, you've been crying." His words were full of concern. "What is it, honey? Is it Garcia?"
    Hannah wanted to speak, but she couldn't. She felt a strange tightness in her throat that prevented her from saying anything. The thought of her speechlessness nearly caused her to smile, in that odd way people sometimes do when they are frightened or unsure, but her lips did not move. Ethan put his arms around her. He smelled of sleep, and his warm skin was comforting.
    "Please talk to me," he said quietly as he held her.
    "I can't," she finally answered. "Sometimes I feel as if I'm falling down some dark hole, deeper and deeper. I don't want to go, but I can feel myself being sucked in. Taken back to Rock Point and my family's tree farm." Tears started to fall again and she buried her face in his chest. "I feel so out of it. So alone."
    "But you're not alone," he said tenderly. "You have us."
    Her gaze shifted from her hands to her husband's face. His eyes glistened with emotion. "Sometimes I don't know what I have, Ethan. Sometimes I don't know who I am and where I've been--" She put her fingertips to his mouth to stifle him from speaking. "Before you say anything," she said, "I'll admit it sounds completely crazy and it could be, but it is the truth. So much has been said about my life, or my mother's, that I don't know what's real."
    "None of that matters. You know what does."
    With that, he took her by the hand and led her down the hall to Amber's room. He said nothing. He didn't have to. He didn't even point to emphasize the connection. Hannah knew it. The two slipped back under the covers of their antique pineapple-post bed and held each other close and kissed. As the early-morning sun crawled over the saw tooth of the mountains, Ethan and Hannah made love, and for