“I don’t think he’s scared of anything. I have a bad feeling, a really bad feeling. There’s something wrong with him.” I told Marie that he must have followed me on the trail when I walked Sage to the ARCO. How when the storm was looking bad, I thought I’d shelter at the bottling factory, and I’d already gone down the hill and was trying to cross the creek when he turned up on the motorbike.

“How could he know I was there? In all the woods, in all the miles and miles of woods, how could he know where I was, and how did I never hear him? How do you know him anyway?”

“I don’t know if he followed you,” said Marie. “I met him after a show. I’d gotten a ride into Philly with Michael Miller. He was going to some basketball game or something. Michael said he’d bring me home if I stood outside The Hot Club at twelve thirty. I waited for like forty-five minutes, and he never showed up. There’s no trains or buses or anything to the suburbs at that hour. I only knew people vaguely at the show and most of them had gone and Rae wasn’t there. I was standing on South Street in the middle of the night, thinking, What am I going to do? I mean, everyone was gone. Then Wilson pulled up in the Buick. He said he’d seen me earlier and had wondered what was one of the Gallaghers from Valley Forge Mountain doing at a punk show, and he brought me all the way home to the top of the street.”

Marie lay back next to me on the bed and raised her hands together to cup a papier-mâché planet hanging on a string. She had on black lace gloves with all the fingers cut off. Her fingers were so small compared to mine.

“See, that’s just strange,” I said. “How did he know to check on you like that?”

“I think it was a coincidence,” Marie said. “But he is definitely interested in us. When we were driving home, he asked about Dad. You know how no one ever talks about it, but he just said it. How everyone knows our mom’s not around that much, working and everything, and our dad’s gone.”

“I just don’t understand what he wants. He’s way older than us. None of us were ever friends with him. He doesn’t even have friends.”