“I want to help you,” he said. “I would do anything—but you can’t stay here. Of course you can’t.”

“Oh,” I said. “No, that’s fine. It was a stupid idea. You don’t have the room.”

“It has nothing to do with the room, and you know it.”

When I said goodbye, Eddie handed me fifteen dollars. “It’s all I have at the moment,” he said. “But maybe you could get a room or something for a night.” He hugged me tightly. “You know what you have to do, right? You have to learn his name. His real name. Names matter.”

He sighed and I felt his breath on the top of my head. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “Find his name,” he said. “That’s the only way to have any power over him.”

I looked back once from the hallway, and Eddie was still standing there.

Lucas came home the next morning. Or, was brought home. George Samson stood, ill at ease, in the doorway and told me he’d found him on the lighthouse eventually. Lucas looked pale and puckered, cold. He wouldn’t talk to me. Wouldn’t look at me.

Cole showed up after lunch, and the two of them moved the woodpile from the backyard to the woodshed. They stacked wood in each other’s arms. I felt sharp envy. All was forgiven apparently for Cole; I sat in the silence of the house, wondering when I would be forgiven.

It was October. How did it get to be October?

When I couldn’t take the silent treatment anymore, I took off for the landing. But soon, Cole caught up with me. We walked together in silence until we reached Clara Day Street. The landing was empty, and it felt as though we were the only inhabitants as we strolled the sidewalks.

“I should have said this right away,” I began.

There were bright orange pumpkins and dark red chrysanthemums in front of every store. Jack’s had decorated its doorway with a string of orange and black lights. I was shivering from the wind, or maybe from the invisible exchange I felt between us, something dark and overripe. I thought of berries, of brambles. I stopped walking, turned to him.

“It can never happen again,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to say. I thought—I don’t really know what I was thinking. It was a onetime thing, a mistake.”

I saw a look cross his face, a tiny shadow, as if somewhere above him a small winged thing had crossed in front of the light. His jaw tightened.