My heart went out to him, and I reached over and took the locket for a moment, feeling the strong "SRC" engraved on its heart-shaped face. "Lou, she's going to come out of it. And when she does, she'll probably explain everything. She's going to be okay any day now, I've got a hunch. A gut feeling."

I had a gut feeling, all right, but not that she was going to be fine. My real fear was she was going to wake up a fantasy-bound child again.

Then I handed the locket back. He'd seemed to turn anx­ious without it. He took the silver heart and just stared down at it. In the silence that settled over us, I decided to take a closer look at the passport. I supposed Lou had already gone through it, but maybe he'd missed something.

As I flipped through the waterlogged pages, I came across a smudgy imprint, caked with a thin layer of dried river clay, that was almost too dim to be noticed.

"Lou, did you see this?" I held it under the light and beckoned him over. "Can you read it?"

"Probably not without my specs." He took it and squinted helplessly. "My eyes aren't getting any better."

I took it back and rubbed at the page, cleaning it. It was hard to make out, but it looked like "Delegacion de Migracion, Aeropuerto Internacional, Guatemala, C.A."

"I think this is a Guatemalan tourist entry visa." I raised the passport up to backlight the page. "And see that faint bit there in the center? That's probably her entry date. Written in by hand."

He took it and squinted again. "I can't read the damned thing, but you're right. There's some numbers, or something, scribbled in."

I took it and rubbed the page till I could read it clearly. "It's March eleventh. And it was last year."