The state road winds through horse country, farmhouses with red roofs and split-rail fences. Green country, low-hanging trees, and it's a fast road, a good road, twisting and well-kept. Sam pushes his feet against the floor to feel the way the car loves the road, tires over pavement under steel.

Albemarle County changes to Augusta, Nelson, a bottleneck of counties. They were looking for the highway once, but they don't need it. The state road is sweet and there's no cause to leave. He could press his hands into the earth here, he thinks, lay his ear to the ground and hear its pulse.

*

Sam knows from the start this isn't really a case. He knows from the crinkle of Dean's eyes, the curve of his jaw, from Dean's hand on his shoulder, not touching the skin. He's convinced, sometimes, that if he breathes right Dean's thoughts will be laid bare to him. It would have to be an even stretch of breathing, maintained over distance and time.

Virginia is a thousand miles away. Dean takes it slow. Two days bleed into three, to four. He stops more often as they edge further east. Sam says nothing. Hours in the car are non-time, don't add up; hours in the car are a day without end or beginning. Time starts over when they arrive.

*

Sam knows the taste of college campus, hasn't forgotten the way his muscles sing at the possibility of these places. There are three thousand miles between Stanford and Charlottesville, Virginia, but the rightness is here, bone-deep pleasing.

The first three months at Stanford, he buried himself in books, nose to the ground. Eighteen years of wanting and he knew to be glad he'd won; but the first three months he drifted: transparent, line in air. He learned to center himself around Jess, later. He taught himself the love of these places, and he has not unlearned it, doesn't want to.

*

Anna Lee Danielson was twenty-one years old. She had a boyfriend and a dog, had straight As and a med school acceptance letter. She had a glass of red wine and a palm full of sleeping pills. There's nothing supernatural about it.

Dean bites at his fingernails, spends the day at the library charming his way into the records. Sam talks to the friends. He hasn't forgotten this, either, the rhythms of their grief. There's a sameness to college and loss, and Sam's an expert on could-have-beens. He keeps his smile tight, eyes down, ears keen. He thinks it through, considers the far side of this, turns it over like a bowl in his hands, but there's nothing supernatural about it.

He talks to all of the friends nonetheless; this isn't something that can be done partway. Matching up against them feels much like instinct. They're smart kids, good kids, noses in books, party when they can. They were his once, these people, and he knows to love the transience of them: these people, those years.

*

He walks along the Lawn, the capital L obvious in the curling of tongues. His wanting runs deeper this time of year, towards the middle of April, and Dean's no fool. A month to graduation, the press of the end, and Jess, the richness of her, smile in the daytime and form in the dark. Jess: a curving smile, and Sam's glad it was Dean who saw her again, not he.

*

Sam tells him he found nothing and Dean doesn't flush, but Sam can see it in the steadiness of his breathing, the strong thrum that is his pulse.

"There's a poltergeist in Georgia," he says over lunch.

Sam knows an apology when he hears one. He touches his fingers to his napkin, rolls it and unrolls. "Where?"

"Savannah."

Five hundred miles, Sam thinks, a day; a year since they've been there last. "All right," he says, and pays with cash.

*

Ivy Road snakes through hills, such green as to be buried in it. They were looking for the highway, once, highways east then south, but west is a strong direction, a pull.

Sam knows the feel of Dean's hands, knows the touch of the sky to the ground. He knows that there are times not to speak, and he knows that Dean doesn't believe it. He knows the rasp of Dean's jaw in his hand, the clean line of his hip, the pressure and the pull. He knows them in a field beside the road, in a hotel bed, in the Impala, windows open, ten miles of air.

*

There are things that cannot be unlearned. He has lived with two centers but only one pull: the firm plates of his brother's skull, the fine freckles in his ear. He can peel his brother open with his tongue; he can press his brother down into the earth. He can leave and has, but not forever; he could go to college, did, but not to stay. He tells his brother this when they are sleeping, mouths promises against the muscles of his calf.

His brother loves the car and the car loves the road. Sam loves his brother, the car, the road, loves the way the road bends and curves and loves the car. Loves the lines of his brother, the hardness and the turns.

Soon there will be a poltergeist in Georgia laid to waste. Soon there will be shadows, dusk of this forever day. He feels transparent, a thin line in space, but his brother's arm is firm beneath his hand.

*

Georgia's south but the state road takes them west. There's another highway, asphalt carved through rock, dynamite or ten thousand years of river. Carolina now, mountains in the distance blue and sweet, his brother in the car beside him and the warming highway headed south.