The thing about being the murdered transient is you set the plot in motion.

         Your name will go unspoken, your face unremembered for thirty years, forty years. ’Til he is caught, ’til he confesses. ’Til your name spills from his smiling, laughing mouth with all the others, Bernice, Clara, Tillie, Sue.

         He’ll mention your slender throat. He’ll say slender. He’ll remember the chain he snapped putting his hands around your slender throat. He won’t know the way you, when you were young, dabbed perfume on both sides of your throat, lightly, like a lady, your mother said.

         A lady whispers her scent, a lady never shouts.

         In those days, she still thought you could be a lady.

         He’ll remember the snapping of the chain you wore; he’ll describe it with twists of his hands in interrogation rooms, he’ll love to talk about it, he’ll call each of you by name: Laura, Kelly, Jenna, Jill. He’ll say the chain snapped under his hands, say snapped, say snapped, snapped, snapped.

         The necklace was a confirmation gift from your mother that she draped ’round your throat after you’d dabbed the perfume, lightly, she said, do it lightly, and you looked in the mirror and she looked in the mirror and you both thought how beautiful you were. You always wore the necklace after that, laying it beside your bed at night, steeped in the scent of your mother’s perfume. Even then, even that night, that last night, you could still smell that old, old scent, and you thought of home.

         It was a cheap trinket, silver-plated cross pendant with bent, burnished edges. He won’t remember the way your hand went up to the cross where it lay at your collarbone, the way you rubbed your thumb over the top of it. He won’t remember the cross at all, only the snapping of the chain.

         Listen.

         You will never be found.

         You will never, never be found.

         You will be a name on a list, he’ll sing your name like a song, sing all your names: Annabeth, Caitlin, Corrine. He’ll remember where he left you, he’ll remember the dirt, the dirt, the dirt. And they will go there, and they will dig, and all they will find will be a thin, broken chain.

         One of the detectives will hold the chain out before him, will say is this hers, will say we didn’t find her where you said, and he will say I must have buried her deep, then, and smile, and the detective will smile in response. The detective will never be able to look in the mirror without thinking of that smile; the detective will never forget that he smiled, too.

         He’ll go to your sister’s house, put the chain into her hands, gone bent and rough with age, we think this was hers.

         Your sister will say I hadn’t thought of her in years.

         She’ll say I knew she was gone, but I didn’t think like this.

         She’ll remember how it was after you left, how your mother hushed all mention of your name, how your mother said that’s not how a lady behaves, how your mother said be careful or you’ll end up like your sister.

         It was like she was already dead, your sister will tell the detective, and maybe you were already dead by then, maybe already; he won’t remember the year, only the season, warm summer, stir of mothwing in the air. He’ll remember your name and the swallow-flutter of the pulse in your throat. He’ll spend his time on it, that word slender.

         Your sister will topple the chain from one hand to the other, back and back again, snapped-chain necklace, and remember the scent of your mother’s perfume.

         She’ll say: How sad.

         She’ll say: How sad it must be to be a man like him.

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