When Cyrus died, had he felt his soul leaving his body? In a violent death, did the soul leave differently? Did it find another body or bodies to inhabit?

Izzy picked up her phone and texted the man she had met.

◆◆◆

He arrived in less than an hour. She answered the door, with her shaved head and her wound. He wore a plaid flannel shirt over his T-shirt and jeans. The flannel added a breadth and width to his chest and shoulders that made her want to throw herself at him, like an animal seeking warmth. Dog must have wanted the same thing because he ran and leaped up on Ever, then turned a few circles.

Ever stepped inside and she smelled that whiff of comfort—coffee and firewood. Lavender laundry detergent and the freshly washed flannel. Dried lit sage leaves burned to silver-scented smoke. The scents brought her back to that first night when she’d sat on his couch with the cat in her lap, half-forgetting, in that moment, that Cyrus was gone.

“I’m so sorry,” Ever said. He looked as if he might reach to touch the wound on her face, but then he dropped his hand heavily at his side. “What can I do? Aurora?”

She couldn’t find words. “My name is Izzy,” she managed. Outside of the shack, she could sense the wild reaches of the desert with its sinew, its blood and its bones. Cyrus’s bones. She took the smiling photo of Cyrus from her wallet. “You look alike,” she said. “Don’t you look alike?”

She began to tremble.

Ever took a blanket—green with yellow birds—off of the bed, glancing quickly at the mannequin, glancing away.

She tried to explain, but he told her it was okay and lifted the mannequin off the bed, laid it carefully on the ground. He wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. Eventually her muscles softened into the weft and warp of woven cotton.

“You look alike,” she said again. “Don’t you?”

“A little.”

“I met you right after he—”

“I’m not him, Izzy,” Ever said. “I wish I could make everything better, but I’m not him.”

Izzy wanted to sit on his lap—feel the hard denim beneath her—and let him take her in his arms—feel his strength beneath the soft flannel. Instead, in spite of the warmth from the blanket, she convulsed again with a shiver from deep inside of her, got up and let the blanket drop from her shoulders. She began to limp then, zombie-like, favoring one leg, toward the driveway. She didn’t call for Dog, but he followed. She was going to go into the desert where no one could hear her, and she was going to scream and scream until she made a rift in the veil of the night.

But Ever was at her side with the green sky of yellow birds.

“Come back,” he said. “Come on now.”