“It was an accident,” Spud said.

Reed looked at Spud, then at Pip and the chair lying on the floor and said, “Be more careful.” He went back inside the bedroom and closed the door.

Spud put a hand on Pip’s shoulder and gave him a pat. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “He’s just tired.”

Why was Reed being such an asshole? Where was the man who loved his son so much that he’d do anything to save him from an abusive mother? Uneasiness crept up Spud’s back and into his chest. How had he gotten so knotted up in this? He had pledged himself to a plan that would give Reed his son back, and in exchange set Spud up with wealth for life. Had he so been blinded by that promise that he hadn’t seen the truth about his partner? And now he had to spend weeks, maybe months, in this shack before he would be free of his pledge.

But if Spud was being honest, he would admit that it wasn’t his pledge that kept him there. It was the boy. Pip needed Spud in a way that made Spud’s heart ache.

Spud went to Reed’s bedroom and opened the closet door slowly, the hinges squeaking to announce his presence.

“What are you doing?” Reed grumbled from his bed.

“I’m getting clothes for Pip. I’m gonna take him outside so we don’t bother you.”

“You bother me by coming in here… so that you won’t bother me? You see the flaw in your thinking, right?”

“Maybe you should sleep in the other room and I’ll set up in here. That way me and Pip can get up in the morning without waking you.”

It was an idea that came to Spud without much forethought, and after he said the words, he expected Reed to get mad, but Reed never even opened his eyes. Instead, he pulled the covers up around his shoulders. “Yeah, we should do that.”

Spud was so stunned by Reed’s swift capitulation that he almost forgot to grab Pip’s clothing. He would be able to stay with Pip all night. He could honor his promise.

Spud dressed Pip in his warmest clothes, with a coat, hat, and gloves, and then the two of them slipped quietly out the front door.

The shack faced an open space just big enough for a vehicle to turn around; beyond that was a marsh. A fallen cottonwood lay at the edge and Spud used it as a bench. They sat and watched a muskrat swim across the water.

Spud thought about telling Pip another fairy tale but decided to make up a story instead. He told Pip about a Sioux woman who left her son at the base of a large pine tree. She loved her son, but soldiers were searching for her tribe, and so she hid her boy to protect him.

After many days, when the mother didn’t return, the boy went searching for her. He walked from when the sun came up until it was about to go down and came upon a pack of wolves. The leader of that pack, a large wolf named Red, wanted to eat the boy, but another, a wolf named Sparky, saw that the boy was a good child. He took the boy in as his brother, teaching him to run and to hunt, and the boy lived forever in the woods with Sparky.