When I wake up, I check my phone. Nothing from Culler. It’s like he never existed. There is no evidence of him anywhere. But I know he exists, because I wouldn’t be here if he didn’t. I know he exists because every time I think of him, I want to break things.

Milo calls home and tells them we’re on our way. I’m sick about going back again. I’ve barely been away, but everything’s changed. Some small part of me wonders if Mom will wear this experience on her face, on top of Dad’s death, and I won’t be able to recognize her. Or if I will wear it on mine, and whether or not she’ll be able to recognize me.

We pack up my things and put them in the car. Dawn has barely broken. Milo follows me to the clerk’s office, where I return the room key. The clerk doesn’t even look surprised at the addition of Milo, a different boy from the one I came here with.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Have a good one,” Milo says.

We’re almost to the door when the clerk goes, “Oh! Hey. Wait. You’re the one that asked about the church, aren’t you?”

I turn. “Yes.”

“Well, you ran off before I could tell you where it was,” he says, and my heart stops. “You take Crispell Street and turn left onto Seals, keep going until you hit the highway. Turn right, first dirt road you see. About fifteen miles down, you’ll find your absolution.”

My stomach lurches. I turn to Milo, but he’s not looking at me. I wipe my palms on my jeans. My heart is beating fast and insistent in my chest. I taste hope. I don’t need Culler for this. Ask him, ask him, ask him, ask him …

“Milo,” I say as we pull out of the parking lot. But I don’t know how to ask so I just end up saying his name again: “Milo—”

“I know,” he says. But that’s all he says.

*   *   *

The church is plain and so, so neglected.

I don’t understand why anyone would build it just to abandon it. It has echoes of a greatness it never achieved all around it. Like the person who built it wanted to evoke those cathedrals that are so fine and so incredible, they can’t help but steal your breath away whether you’re religious or not. But this church is a failure. Ramshackle and sad. It’s tall. It almost looks taller than it should be or something, like whoever built it was trying to compensate, like height equals grandeur or something, but it doesn’t. Not really.

I try to remember the photograph my father took of the church and try to forget that Culler has those photographs and now I wish I hadn’t given them to him. I want them.

I remember the photo was ominous, which makes my guts twist up because I don’t want it to be an indication of what we’re about to find. The church looked angry.

Today, it looks as tired as I feel. All the staples of an abandoned place are here; what I’m used to seeing. Boarded-up or broken windows, peeling paint. I stare at it and feel all the hours and the road and Culler’s leaving and Milo beside me, and I think no matter what I find here, this trip will have taken something important away from me.

Milo has to force the doors open with my help. The handles are all fucked up, so I have to hold one down while he shoves hard until we have access. We step inside. It’s the mustiest, dustiest, oldest place yet. I don’t know why they don’t just tear it down. No one’s using it.

No one wants it.

“Look at it,” Milo says.

We stand there for a minute, silent. There’s a choir loft above us. The door that leads to it is off the hinges and splintered apart. I keep looking up. The ceiling is ready to go. Spider-webbed stains spread out, like they’re going to consume the place and the day they do is the day it will all collapse in on itself. What if today is that day.

The altar space is at the back, but there’s nothing there anymore. Rows of short metal chairs, dusty and old, face it. I expected pews. Beside the altar is a door leading into another room. I bring my hand to the wall and run my fingers over it. It feels damp.

This doesn’t really seem like a church.

“We’ll find it and then we’ll go,” Milo says.

I point to the choir loft.

“I’m going up.”

“Be careful.”

I step through the door at the side, and climb the creaky, groaning, falling-apart steps—I have to skip over three of them—until I reach the top. It’s worse up here. I don’t understand how the place is sustaining itself. I imagine angels singing up here, praising God, and the floor collapsing beneath their feet. I run my hands over the ruined walls, half-heartedly searching for the last message. I look under things, shift garbage with my foot. It occurs to me I’m stalling. Part of me doesn’t want to find it. I don’t want to go back home and I don’t want this to end.

I don’t want it to end badly. I don’t want it to be worse than what we found in the house.

I walk over to the railing and look down. I watch Milo move along the wall, studying every inch of space on my behalf. He is intent, quiet, and I think about what he said.

It’s like you died that night.

My gaze travels from Milo at the wall to the other side of the room and I catch sight of something that …

“Milo,” I call.

He looks up. “Find it?”

“No.” I point to the side of the room opposite him. “Were you over there yet?”

“Not yet.”

He turns and looks and from his spot he notices the same thing I’m noticing. Intermittent footprints cutting a path through the dust, leading to the wall next to a window. Milo moves to it, but I say, “Wait,” and he stops.

I run back down the steps, almost falling once, sliding into the wall to keep myself upright. I close my eyes briefly and just try to prepare myself for this, whatever it is. Little things are becoming clear: Culler was here. He must have been here.

But was he here before or after he stranded me?

And what if it’s bad.

What if it is so bad, the only way to tell me is not to tell me.

The worst part of having no reason is that there could be any reason. I think of the message in the house. What if knowing is worse than not knowing.

No.

Not knowing is worse.

Milo stays where he is. I follow Culler’s footprints to the far wall, where I see it, but it’s not what it should be. The tell-tale initials of my father’s are still there, scratched hard into the wood, S.R., but whatever they gave weight to is gone.

Culler scratched the message my father left behind out—unless the last thing my father wanted the world to know is as abstract as a square space, purposefully worn away. But it’s not. It can’t be. I think. I don’t know. I don’t—

“Culler was here,” I say. This is what I have decided: Culler was here. He did this. “I think he scratched the message out.”

“What?” Milo asks. He makes his way over to me. “Why?”

Why. Why. Why. Why.

The question my life has become.