I closed my eyes and thought about Lewis coming home. He would want me to submit to sex with him again, something that interested me not at all. I had changed in the days since Lewis had been gone. I felt anxiety about his return, the same anxiety I felt as a schoolgirl, as if I were going to class to take a test for which I felt I was not prepared.

Lewis had standards, requirements.

He would want me to be home every night.

My anxiety turned to anger. Again, I had allowed myself to become enmeshed with responsibilities. Now I had to cut loose from this restrictive web. I had no desire to submit to any test, any scrutiny. I would have to leave him; the only question was when.

Darkness deepened outside, and I became wide awake and restless. My freedom drew nigh, the decision was made: I would soon be traveling again, alone, unburdened. Yet for now, I had to wait. I had to wait.

I went to the kitchen, feeling leaden and sad.

Lewis would be home tomorrow. The phrase continued to run through my mind. Each time I paused in my mundane chores—dusting, cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming—the words would zing through my brain and anxiety would follow on their heels.

I ran out of busy work at nine o’clock. The two living-­room lamps emitted a yellow light that re­flected weirdly from the dark-­black picture window in Lewis’s front room. I paced. I sat on the edge of his couch. I paced. I sat. I felt stiff, wound tight. My hands pulled and twisted on each other, fighting a war in my lap.

Lewis would be home tomorrow.

I wanted to go out. Into the darkness. I wanted to surrender myself to it, give myself up to the strange­ness, the altered side of my personality that came so alive after sunset.

I wanted to go find Boyd, to see if they had tracked and killed anything that they could calmly blame for the deaths.

Boyd.

I wanted to see Boyd. I ached to see Boyd.

My hands fell apart and lay on my thighs like two broken birds.

Boyd.

I leaned back into Lewis’s stiff couch and closed my eyes. I remembered being in the cab of Boyd’s truck, snugly bookended by the brothers. The scratchy feel of the forced hot air, the music on the radio, the spotless windshield . . . I remembered his smell, woodsy and alert.

I remembered our fight.

My fingernails dug deeply into my palms as a jabbing nausea fired up behind my breastbone. It would not take long for Boyd to discover who was responsible for those deaths.

I began to pace again. Just below the surface, feelings were prodding me, poking, trying to get through. New emotional plateaus were about to be reached in my upward climb to adulthood.