There’s not even a place to park in front of my house. My parents’ cars are in the driveway, and there are several dark cars parked along the curb, so I end up at the corner of the street, walking the rest of the way home.

“Where were you?” my dad asks as soon as I open the door. There’s a group of them gathered in the dining room—my parents, men and women in suits, Agent Lowell. But no one waits for me to answer. They make a space for me and beckon me forward.

Agent Lowell has a hand on the back of a chair at the table. “Here, take this,” he says.

My mom paces behind me. My dad, in contrast, is completely still. Once I’m seated, Agent Lowell places a photo directly in front of me, on top of the wooden table.

The picture is of my brother. They don’t really need me to confirm this; it’s obvious. In the image, he’s walking sort of diagonally away, but his head is thrown over his shoulder so he’s almost looking straight at the camera. Like someone called his name and he’s looking for the source.

Still, it’s a punch to the gut, seeing this. Something new. A moment, an image I’ve never seen before. I’d just about given up on seeing any such moments ever again.

I lean closer to the image. At the edge of the frame is the solid brown tail and a hind leg—Colby, beside him.

I can’t figure out where he is, though. Only that the dog is with him, and it looks like he’s in the woods. Colby would never leave him, my dad told the investigators, and he’s right. We lost my brother and our dog that day, but I’m really only allowed to admit to missing the one. But here they both are, and something tightens in my throat, seeing them again.

Agent Lowell places a second photo in front of me, this one zoomed in on Liam’s face. “In your best estimation, is this an accurate picture of Liam the day he went missing?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “It is.” I can feel my heart racing.

“His clothes, the details?” he asks, and then I understand my role. I’m confirming the clothes he wore, the dog, the way he’s looking over his shoulder. His dark blond hair is a little longer than it usually was, because he was due for a haircut, so it sort of falls over his forehead from the weight of it, instead of staying up and to the side, like he styles it. Styled it.

The jeans, the long-sleeved maroon shirt, the blue sneakers. All of it is Liam, all of it the details we gave over and over about that day; remembering, pulling things from his closet so we were sure. These details are now ingrained in our memory.

But, I see, there are some things we had forgotten, that I only remember now, by looking at him: the way his left arm bends slightly, held at his hip, from an old injury that never healed right. A broken bone brought to the doctor too late, already starting to ossify around the crack on its own. And a cut against the underside of his jawbone, from shaving. I’d forgotten that, completely, until they show me the photo of his face, zoomed in.

I remembered hearing him hiss in the bathroom that morning, the razor dropping, clattering against the sink. A bead of blood on the porcelain, left behind.

Why did I never mention that, in the days that followed? It’s like that detail completely slipped my mind—like I was too focused, instead, on the feeling in the dream, the knowledge that, somehow, his disappearance was inevitable.

“It’s him. It’s that day,” I say. More definitive now. There’s no best estimation here. It’s him. In that moment. The small, chaotic details leading to only that day, and no other day.

My mother whispers, “Oh my God.” The room has otherwise gone silent.

“Thank you, Nolan,” Agent Lowell says, a hand on my shoulder.

“What does this mean?” my dad asks. I’d leave, but the hand is still heavy on my shoulder, as if holding me in place.

“There’s a time stamp in the image file. The date and time lead us to believe it was taken around four in the afternoon the day of his disappearance,” Agent Lowell responds. “Though we know these things can be fudged with.”

Nothing is definite. Still, it was taken that day.

“Do any of you recognize the location?” he asks.

I don’t. None of us do. It’s just trees, and Colby’s tail, and my brother. “Couldn’t this still be the park?” I ask.

“That would be highly unlikely,” he responds after a pause. “This is almost four hours after he disappeared, and we had plenty of officers patrolling the park. It seems unlikely he would’ve been there all along without giving himself away. Especially with the dog.”

Everything changes. I slip from his grasp, from the table, from that room. Their voices rise, and I continue up the steps, trying to make sense of things.

I feel sick. My brother, in a photo with Colby, at 4 p.m. He’d disappeared around noon—12:10, we decided, the best estimate after going through everything, over and over again, with the police. From the sun in the sky, to the temperature of the food, to the witnesses who saw us entering the park, and the cameras on the road before the entrance. We didn’t have a clock to consult, until my dad went back to the car for his phone, to eventually call the police. It was a rule that we left our phones behind on family outings. It was a rule that we never followed again.

Inside Liam’s empty room, I pace, trying to think.

I remember that night my brother appeared to me, across the living room, a boundary he could not breach. Help us. Please, he said.

When was that?

I stop moving, the room charged. The hair stands up on the back of my neck, because the date…the when…it was when I was sick, with the flu. I remember, I was sick when the news came through about some double murder nearby. I remember, because I was on the couch that day, my computer setup in my lap, the noise of the morning news on in the background—but I had been focused on something else.

I bought this equipment the morning after my brother appeared to me, asking for help. I bought this equipment while the news anchor reported the details about some terrible crime. I remember thinking: At least they know what happened; at least they know.

The phone rang then, because school was canceled—a suspect on the loose—but it didn’t matter anyway because I was sick.

Am I making it up? Putting the pieces together because I want them to connect? The memories blending together in my mind?

I have to be sure before I tell Kennedy.

Back in my room, I log on to my computer and pull up my credit card history, scanning back month by month until I find it. The order for the EMF meter, the Geiger counter, and more. I trace my finger to the date listed beside the purchase: 12/4.

December fourth. My God, I was right. I bought this equipment December fourth.

It has to mean something.

I go to text Kennedy, but I already have a message from her. It must’ve come through while we were all sitting around the table, staring at the image of Nolan.

We’re running out of time, she says.

I can feel it, too. The men in my house, the case reopened. My brother, the sound of his imagined voice whispering in my ear: Help us. Please.