A week turned into two weeks, and then into three weeks, and September was in full glow and Cole was still spending every evening with us. Here, conveniently enough, was a brother to take care of Lucas in my place. We don’t choose our prisons, but we do come to love them. I loved Lucas deeply and honestly; I hardly knew who I was without him. But—I knew I was someone; I knew someone was there in me, some sliver of a girl who hadn’t had a chance to grow up yet. That was why in unguarded moments when asked my age, I still immediately thought eighteen. Or sometimes thirteen. Or even, ten. As if I were trapped in time. Sometimes I felt a passing sadness for that girl, the one I’d been, or still was, frozen under a magician’s spell.

In Cole, I saw that girl’s release.

Lucas is happy with Cole here, I told myself. And so am I. What else matters, really?

I fell asleep watching a movie with Cole and Lucas. When I woke, Lucas was gone. My feet were pushed up against the outside of Cole’s thigh, and when I pulled them away, groggy, blinking in the light, he reached out for my foot. His warm hand enveloped my foot, and the heat traveled to my ankle, my calf and shin, my knees, my thighs. A current of danger. I tried to remember how long he had been here. Exactly how many days. He came in August. I remembered the heat and the smell of the sea.

“How long are you planning to stay?” I asked, removing my foot from his touch.

“A long time. As long as it takes.”

“As long as it takes for what?”

He didn’t answer. The movie was still playing, a dirt road, two boys running away. Dust and weeds along the edge.

“Isn’t there anyone waiting for you?”

“I told you, there isn’t.”

Outside, moths were banging against the screen. It was dark and still, but every now and then a fierce wind would rise up and shake the trees. I wouldn’t want to go outside, not this late, not on a windy night.

“You can stay here tonight,” I said. “We have a guest room.”

It was actually Baby B’s room, and no one had stayed in it for a long, long time. We always joked that it wasn’t a guest room so much as a ghost room. “I’ll show you,” I said and led him upstairs. It was still furnished for a baby. There was a little twin bed against the wall, a dresser with teddy bear knobs.