“No, I meant in this place. How long have you lived here?”

“Oh, a long time.” She plucks another weed and, unaccountably, places the green tip between her front teeth and nibbles on it, her jaws working like a rabbit’s. With a sound of dissatisfaction, she shakes her head and tosses it in the bucket.

“Those suits you’re wearing,” she says. “I think I’ve seen those before.”

Logan is perturbed. Has someone else been here? “When was that, do you think?”

“Don’t remember.” She purses her lips. “I doubt they’re very comfortable. You can wear what you like, though. It’s not really my business.”

More time passes. The pail is nearly full.

“Now, I don’t believe we got your name,” Logan says to the woman.

“My name?”

“Yes. What are you called?”

It is as if the question makes no sense to her. The woman lifts her head and angles her gaze toward the sea. Her eyes narrow in the bright oceanic light. “No one around here to call me anything.”

Logan glances at Nessa, who nods cautiously. “But surely you have a name,” he presses.

The woman doesn’t answer. The murmuring has returned. Not murmuring, Logan realizes: humming. Mysterious notes, almost tuneless but not quite.

“Did Anthony send you?” she asks.

Once again, Logan looks at Nessa. Her face says that she, too, has made the connection: Anthony Carter, the third name on the stone.

“I don’t believe I know Anthony,” Logan tenders. “Is he around here?”

The woman frowns at the absurdity of this question, or so it seems. “He went home a long time ago.”

“Is he a friend of yours?”

Logan waits for more, but there is none. The woman takes a single rose between her thumb and forefinger. The petals are fading, brittle and brown. From the pocket of her dress she removes a small blade and clips the stem at the first tier of leaves and drops the wilted bloom in the pail.

“Amy,” Logan says.

She stops.

“Is that you? Are you…Amy?”

With painstaking, almost mechanical slowness, she swivels her face. She regards him for a moment, expressionless, then frowns as if puzzled. “You’re still here.”

Where would they have gone? “Yes,” says Nessa. “We came to see you.”

She shifts her eyes to Nessa, then back to Logan. “Why are you still here?”

Logan senses a deepening presence in her gaze. Her thoughts are taking clearer form.

“Are you…real?”

The question stops him. But of course it makes sense that she would ask this. It is the most natural question in the world, when one has been alone so long. Are you real?

“As real as you are, Amy.”

“Amy,” she repeats. It is as if she is tasting the word. “I think my name was Amy.”

More time goes by. Logan and Nessa wait.

“Those suits,” she says. “They’re because of me, aren’t they?”

It surprises him, the thing he does next. Yet he experiences not the slightest hesitation; the act feels ordained. He removes his gloves and reaches up to the clasp that holds his helmet in place.

“Logan—” Nessa warns.

He pulls the helmet over his head and places it on the ground. The taste of fresh air swarms his senses. He breathes deeply, enriching his lungs with the scents of flowers and the sea.

“I think this is much better, don’t you?” he asks.

Tears have risen at the corners of the woman’s eyes. A look of wonder comes. “You’re really here.”

Logan nods.

“You’ve come back.”

Logan takes her hand. It is nearly weightless, and alarmingly cold. “I’m sorry it took us so long. I’m sorry you have been alone.”

A tear spills down her weathered cheek. “After all this time, you’ve come back.”

She is dying. Logan wonders how he knows this, but then the answer comes: his mother’s note. “Let her rest.” He has always assumed she was speaking of herself. But now he understands that the message was for him, for this day.

“Nessa,” he says, not breaking his gaze from Amy, “go back to camp and tell Wilcox to gather his team and call for a second lifter.”

“Why?”

He turns his face to look at her. “I need them to leave. All their gear, everything except a radio. Deliver the message and then come back. I would be very grateful if you could do that for me, please.”

She pauses, then nods.

“Thank you, Nessa.”

Logan watches as she passes through the flowers, into the trees, and out of sight. So much color, he thinks. So much life everywhere. He feels tremendously happy. A weight has lifted from his life.

“My mother dreamed of you, you know.”

Amy’s head is bowed. Tears fall down her cheeks in glistening rivers. Is she happy? Is she sad? There is a joy so powerful it is like sadness, Logan knows, just as the opposite is also true.

“Many people have. This place, Amy. The flowers, the sea. My mother painted pictures of it, hundreds of them. She was telling me to find you.” He pauses, then says, “You were the one who wrote the names on the stone, weren’t you?”

She gives the barest nod, grief flowing, rising out of the past.

“Brad. Lacey. Anthony. Alicia. Michael. Sara. Lucius. All of them, your family, your Twelve.”