It was a hundred and six degrees at the Whitman Mission a few miles west of Walla Walla, and smoky from the fires still burning up the West. The word “massacre” was not mentioned in the National Park Service material regarding the deaths at the site in 1847, though there were books for sale with titles like The Whitman Massacre and A Survivor’s Recollections of the Whitman Massacre and Eliza Spalding’s Whitman Massacre Cookbook. Carleen wrote her name in the visitor register and insisted Miller do the same.

They’d arrived at his sister’s house in Spokane the night before and now it was too early to be awake. But they were awake, Miller at the kitchen table with a newspaper, Carleen beside him painting a domestic scene in watercolors — a house with a door, four windows, a chimney under rising curlicues of smoke, a cat in a tree, six seagulls, a sun and a rainbow and three tiny tornadoes. “What about people?” Miller said, and Carleen said, “The people are next.”

If this were a history, the dates would matter. If the dates were wrong, the names would matter. If the names and dates were wrong, which they would be, the places would matter, because places always matter. Even when they’re wrong.

Miller headed west toward Washaway Beach, the wrong way if he was trying to get to Port Townsend, but he hadn’t been out there since he was a kid and wanted to see how much more of it had washed away. He told Carleen about it as they drove, how it had been a beach town in the 19th century, North Cove, with a cannery and a lighthouse and hotels, and how it had all fallen, piece by piece, into the ocean over the years.

Miller Cane was six days into the Rosedale massacre when Heffner slid into the Legion Hall during an afternoon animal session. Miller didn’t recognize him at first, was focused on calming a howling beagle he’d just settled into a survivor’s lap. But the rage vibe was unmistakable, a disruption in the air