She can’t say, she doesn’t think she can say, that she hates what it sounds like when Reynard says her husband’s name out loud, so she just shudders a little. She feels it like the first whiff that something’s charred and ruined in the oven. Surely Reynard can smell it too. Look at him, lifting both hands for a second so they move brief quick wild around his face, both ears, both eyes, around the mouth, hear no evil, see no evil, and the other one. It’s a speech she is about to give. “All my life,” she says, “forever since I was little, I have felt like things are after me. Wild things, beastly creatures, at my heels. All right? You know? I’ve tried to keep them down. I got married so I wouldn’t rattle alone in an apartment. I had this baby that came, whoosh like you wouldn’t believe with the pain, out of this hairy body.”

“You’re not that hairy.”

“And I thought,” she says, “in the hospital, finally, this is it. I’ll be out of the woods, I thought. But there’s no out of it, is there? It’s all woods, and I feel worse now doing this. So, sorry, I’m apologizing, and thank you and please leave me alone.”

“You forgot to thank the Academy.”

“Fuck you.”

“This is your chance to do just that,” he says, as filthy as it sounds.

“No. I have a kid.”

“Your kid’s not here, trust me.”

“I don’t,” Rachel says, “trust you,” before she knows it. It’s definitely true. She thinks Reynard probably stole her phone that first afternoon at the bar, before that first walk in the woods. She has spent weeks making do with an old spare, surprised it still works, afraid to tell her husband she lost the latest model even though he’d be kind about it. You can’t cheat with someone trustworthy. You can only rob a bank with a bank robber, only snatch a child with a person who would do such a thing. Reynard is that man, and she has to get out of here, leave the scene of the crime. “Stay away from me,” she says, and mostly means it. “Stop coming after me. I can’t have people coming after me.”

Reynard points above him, above both of them. “This cloud,” he says, “over you, this beast or whatever you want to name it, it’s just unhappiness, is all that it is. You can get rid of it. I can help you, and if you let me do it, I promise it will all go away. I’ll vanish. You’ll never see me again.”