The ride to Valleyview is quiet. Maybe because it’s night and because there are so few cars on the road. Maybe Culler needs to absorb this in silence because it’s happening to him too.

Six hours of road are stretched ahead of us and it’s starting to sink in, what I’ve done. Milo texts me as soon as we pass the THANK YOU FOR VISITING HAVERFIELD! sign. It’s like he can sense that I’ve reached that point of no return. We go back and forth.

PLEASE LET ME CALL.

NOT A GOOD TIME.

WHY?

ON THE ROAD.

WHERE?

DOESN’T MATTER. EVERYTHING’S OK.

My stomach twists with guilt. Beth probably made it sound bad, what I said to her. But he knows me. He should know I only kind of meant it.

Streetlights disappear. The farther we get from Haverfield, the more stars there are. I roll down the window and rest my head against the frame, hoping the mild summer air will keep me awake. I’m crashing, but it wouldn’t be fair to Culler to fall asleep.

“So,” Culler says after a while, and I turn my face from the window. “When we get to Valleyview we’ll find a motel and look for the gazebo in the day. Find the message and then get to Labelle as fast as possible. How much time did you say Milo was giving you?”

“Two days.”

“Okay.”

My cell phone rings. I turn it off and feel my face go red.

“Is that him?” Culler asks.

“Probably. Never mind about Milo, though.” I clear my throat because I do not want to talk about Milo with Culler. “Thank you for doing this with me…”

“Thank you for letting me.”

“You need it too.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I do.”

“What was my father like with you?” I ask.

Culler is quiet for a long time, weighing the question. While he does that, I prepare to hear about a man I never knew, a man separate from my father. The one I want to know.

The one who would kill himself.

“Sometimes I want to ask you the same thing,” he says, glancing at me. “What your father was like with you…”

“I asked you first.”

“Well, he was kind,” Culler says. “He was very kind, very passionate. Inspiring. But quiet … and when he was on to something he was really intense and you could tell he felt it—that he had an idea and he was going to turn it into something amazing—just by being near him.”

“Topher said you were an art school reject,” I say, and then I feel bad because those weren’t Topher’s exact words, but I’m too tired to think of a nicer way to say it. “I mean—”

“I thought I wanted something different then.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I think it must’ve happened for a reason.” He looks at me. “I thought it was over for me. I was really head fucked about it. But it brought me to your father and he made me feel like, for the first time I was doing something right … I always felt like the camera was what I needed to make sense of everything—to ask questions and then make answers out of the photographs I took. And then I felt—I feel so strongly—I have to share those questions and those answers. To me, that’s art. He really understood.”

“Are they posed?” I ask. “Your photographs.”

He tenses. I feel it. It is too personal. I shouldn’t have asked.

“They’re truths,” he says, which I guess is a vague way of saying yes and no. “But they’re lies. Constructs.” He looks at me for as long as he can before turning back to the road. “Eddie, I think … sometimes lies bring you to the truth … or help you reconcile with it…”

I roll up the window. The road moving under the car is hypnotic and I know I’m going to fall asleep. Don’t fall asleep.

“Ever since he died, it’s like it’s gone,” Culler says. “It’s like … there’s something between me and the photographs I want to take…”

I don’t say anything. It’s so sad. I wish my dad were here. Not just to be here, but because I wish he would answer for this. I want to make him answer for how sad this is.

“I want it back,” Culler says after a while. “More than I can say.”

My eyes drift shut.