Shot had gone off in spectacular fashion, like a hundred bottle rockets exploding too close, and we were both in our separate rooms vibrating from the aftermath. The way your bones feel the abuse even if your bones aren’t broken. So you’re both numb and humming, both angry and cold.

I don’t remember particulars; they were always so banal. They say a trigger can be anything. Shot’s randomness gave me so many triggers, they began to cancel one another out. He had been out of sorts over something about the crops, or some arrangement Father had made with a neighbor, and it just escalated until things were thrown at walls—and then I was.

The usual. But this time I’d seen Ned’s lip tremble, and it was getting to him more than normal. Like maybe having been stoic all those other times had used up too much of himself. Why that day, I couldn’t ever figure out, though. What else had gone wrong? That he couldn’t share.

We’d been punished, as if we’d started it, and sent to our rooms, while Mom and Dad sat at the kitchen table, among the dirty dishes, arguing—but softly, so Shot wouldn’t hear. Shot was out on the porch demolishing a rocking chair and randomly taking potshots with his hunting rifle at things in the backyard. The chickens had scattered.

I would’ve gone in to talk to Ned anyway, but I heard him moving around with purpose, which alarmed me. So I snuck over and saw he was packing a knapsack.

“What’re you doing?” The thought had struck, hard, that maybe he was running away.

“Shhhhh! Nothing.”

“That’s not nothing.”

I felt the gash in my heart again. Without Ned, I wasn’t sure I could stand things. I mean, I know now I could, but I was a large, powerful child who thought she was weak and puny.

Ned smiled in the rough light of the lamp by his nightstand.

“Not leaving, if that’s what you think. Just an expedition. I’ve got a good lead. I’ll be back by morning. Promise.”

It had begun to rain, hard, and Shot had decided to start taking out his anger on random stuff in the barn. We could hear him shouting over the rain.

“The ravines will flood if it keeps up,” I said. At the very least they’d be too muddy. “How’re you going to see?”

“Saved up. Look.” He took a miner’s headlamp out of his backpack.

At the time, I thought it was cool in a mysterious expedition way. Brave. Now it just seems sad, pointless. Anyone at all could have seen him coming.

The rain became a squall, hit the windows with a rattle and slap.

“Don’t go,” I said.