He started unlocking doors, revealing a staircase to the upper floors of the building. We draped Prudence in plastic and carefully moved her panels to the lobby, where she could lie flat for another month, undisturbed, then packed my boxes and materials into the truck’s covered bed. We tracked more mud, this time all over the interior floor mats (“now we’re really in trouble,” he said, and laughed), and roared down the driveway again, zipping south to Granger Walk and then back up Carey’s studio drive, a route now familiar on the second going, this time driving the truck directly into the barn itself, leaving huge tire tracks over the once-perfectly-spotless cement floor.

When we pulled in, Marlin and Jes were both leaning against the wall, seltzers in hand, and they helped unload without blinking. The three of them moved in concert, with a routine automation.

Minutes later, everything was unloaded and stacked against the wall.

“Where’s the rest of your stuff, dude?” Marlin asked, running her hands through her waist-length hair.

“It burned down.”

“Of course,” she said, shaking her head, wrapping her hair into a knot. “Right. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay?” I asked.

The three of them looked at each other.

“It’s been empty since—for years,” Marlin said. “We’ve been—well—miserly about it. It’s dumb.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” she said. “Welcome to Pine City.”

Marlin tossed me a seltzer, and we touched the cans together.

“Where’s Jack?” I asked.

“Home,” the three of them said at once.

“He’ll be back next week. Jack has kids,” Tyler explained. “He doesn’t sleep over anymore. It’s only an hour back to his place.”

“He has kids?” I was shocked. My long-standing impression of Jack Wells had been—well—Peter Pan, or maybe Robinson Crusoe: He lived on a boat. He spearfished the Hudson River. He carved wood and wove fabrics on looms and only did an exhibition once every five years or so. He was the absolute last person in Pine City whom I expected to be an adult.

“Oh yeah. Jack figured life out. He’ll tell you about it, if you ask,” Marlin said. She lifted a box, seltzer still in one hand, and then wrinkled her nose at her own armpit. “Ugh. I smell like a dumpster.”

“Take a bath, Fish,” Tyler said. He leaned over, tilting slowly, and then—before she could stop him—batted Marlin’s seltzer to the ground in one swift movement. The can hit the concrete and bubbled over with foam.

She laughed right away.

“You’re both idiots,” Jes said flatly. I watched the seltzer travel in a rivulet across the floor, toward the drain.

“Let’s swim,” Tyler said suddenly, grabbing the boxes from their hands and putting them on the ground. “Come on. I’ll race you.”

He pulled off his sneakers and jogged into the rain. Marlin rolled her eyes but chased him anyway.