And then—like a sign spontaneously generated by flying too fast downhill—the road curves up again past the cemetery. It’s tragic but apt that this is the one place in Bourne that’s as it should be. It has soft, deep-green grass and meandery paths between sprawling trees. There are all these old, weathered gravestones because, hard as it is to remember, Bourne’s citizens died even before Belsum came to town. It’s hilly, and at the crest of a ridge are the showy monuments: giant angels, giant crosses, tombs that look like houses that would be cramped to live in but are probably plenty roomy if you’re dead, the same few family names over and over—Grove, Alcott, Anderson—town founders, our ancestors, our history. We used to ride by fast so we could hold our breath as we crossed, but now Monday slows as we pass, and I see her eyes seek and find our father’s grave.
This is the part of Bourne’s cemetery that is not as it should be. They had to dig it too fast without making any kind of plan. Mrs. Shriver says that when demand is greater than supply, it makes the economy stronger, but in our cemetery, it just made things overcrowded and chaotic. Maybe that whole supply-demand thing only applies to the living. And it’s sad, which makes sense for a graveyard, but ours is sadder than most because the years on either side of the hyphens are too close together. Bourne was not prepared for all our sudden dead. Maybe no town ever is, though.
Our dad lucked out. He is under a giant oak tree. Some of the trees in Bourne go straight to brown in the fall now, but his still blushes as if embarrassed. It’s already pinking a little as we go by. Monday closes her eyes too long, and I know, I know she doesn’t like to be touched, but I’m worried she’ll crash. I reach out and tap her arm as lightly as I can, but she still snatches it away from me like I burned her.
Her eyes snap open. “Why can it not be yellow?”
“What?”
“His tree. Many trees turn yellow in the fall. His turns red. It is not fair.”
“No,” I agree, “it is not fair.”
We continue down the hill, brake into the curve on Main, stand to pedal hard over the slight slope by the Do Not Shop, wobble off the end of the pavement and through the gravel, climb up across the bridge and over the ravine and pull, breathless and sticky-damp from drizzle and sweat, into the empty parking lot of the library.
Well, almost empty.
The moving vans are gone, but there are two cars. One is a shiny, black BMW, new, immense, almost uncomfortable to look at. （Petra would say “carnal,” “corporeal,” “lascivious,” “lubricious”—it’s weird how many vocabulary words there are to describe kind of gross and inappropriate cars.） The other is the same, only gray. Cars in Bourne are mostly not the shiny luxury variety. More like dented, rusted, ancient pickups or sad sedans with doors of different colors. Or tricked-out, million-year-old wheelchair vans.
Heaped at the far end of the lot are a dozen of those squat little library stools, some of them tipped over, like maybe they were bowled out the front door, their casters spinning uselessly up at the sky.
“Motherfuckers,” Monday curses.
Monday never curses. Which makes me think we can go home now. That word coming out of that mouth says it all really. My mother will be disappointed when we return without a single shred of new evidence, our holsters empty of smoking guns, but my mother is used to being disappointed. It was a dumb plan anyway. I’d maybe buy that River’s just a kid and can’t keep a secret. It’s that he has any confidences to betray that’s hard to believe. When you’re obsessed with something, as my mother is, it’s hard to remember that everyone else isn’t obsessed with it too, but I think about how healthy and whole and normal River seemed—oblivious, ignorant—and I’m certain we already know all we’re going to. We can leave now. But before I can explain this logic to Monday, the front door opens.
River Templeton stands in the doorway with an older version of himself. His father. Must be. My in-breath is quick and loud, and Monday’s head whips around from them to me again.
“Why did you gasp, One?”
“He looks just like his father,” I whisper, “who looks just like—”
“Why are you whispering?” Monday interrupts. “They are too far away to hear.”
Our river has washed away more even than we think. More even than our lives and livelihoods. It’s not just that we are pale, whittled down, water worn, corroded. Our actual DNA is weaker than theirs. Monday and I barely look related. Triplets are rarely identical, but the three of us don’t really even look alike or all that much like Nora either. River is a copy of his father who’s a copy of his. It’s like our genes are not just infirm but mutated, like we’ve sloughed off our essential natures. They’re shiny and strong and cloning themselves. We’re eroding toward gone.