At first they are just out there, drifting, like a mist, or maybe more like a swarm. A swarm of those nasty little gnats that gather in clouds each summer. The voice in my head, the one that's been talking to me since I was seven and Fiona went missing, says: This girl is not her, Brody. She's said straight out she's not her. And if you're wrong, and she's right, and you let her back into your heart, you'll be the one who gets hurt, not her. Only this time, instead of wandering alone in the woods desperately trying to find a girl the only way a small child knows how to, you'll end up on the other end of a bottle of tequila, or in a parking lot fight outside of a bar, or back in jail for any number of self-destructive things you relished before the parents died and forced you to learn how to put your little brothers first. That's how these doubts start. But after a few more minutes of trudging through the thick shrubbery that lines the beach near the lake, these doubts are more than a swarm.
