Kate had just been diagnosed with lupus, and she was terrified. Her father’s hand felt cold, clasped over hers. “The mind is the most complex and mysterious organism in the universe,” he’d said. “There are parts of it that know more than it will ever let on. Maybe it does that to protect us. It could be that those night terrors were created to shield you from the truth. The autoimmune diseases wanted to be heard. But something in your mind, the Wizard behind the curtain, since you loved Dorothy so much, refused to let them. Now, it couldn’t silence them entirely, but it could mask what they were trying to say. By not knowing what was going to come for you as you got older, you were able to live a more carefree life. You were a real spitfire, you know that? The unstoppable Kate. I don’t think you would have been the unstoppable Kate if you’d known this was always waiting for you. You wouldn’t have had all those wonderful experiences, and maybe not even Andrew.” He sipped from his coffee and stared at his pie. “Funny to think that we should be grateful for those night terrors. Life is like that. Funny. Even when you think it’s serious as a five-alarm fire.”

Kate had had to use two napkins to soak up her tears. She’d loved her father more than she ever thought possible at that moment.

Less than a year later, he was gone after a quick but ignoble dance with pancreatic cancer. He never did get to retire, those last days neither golden nor bronze nor tin. He went from the office to the hospital to the hospice, all within the span of five weeks. Death had given him a fast pass, but he’d suffered so much those last two weeks. The phrase white-hot agony hadn’t even put a dent into what he went through, at least until hospice took over.

She missed him so much. More so now that it felt as if she’d also lost her mother. Their relationship had never been the best, but without her father to mediate, it was a disaster.

Buttons nudged her calf, banging his tail against the cabinet.

“You want to close the windows for me?” she said softly.

Buttons put his paws on her thighs, waiting for his ears to be scratched.

“Yeah, I guess you’re too short anyway.”

She leaned over the sink and grabbed the lip of the window, pausing. Kate looked through the screen, the darkness so complete, she couldn’t even see the car parked in front of the house just fifteen feet away.

No bears. No moose.

No shadows. It was too dark for shadows.

Andrew let out a whopper of a snore.

“Someone’s going to have a sore throat in the morning,” she said to the beagle.