I wonder if it will keep improving forever. Surely not. It’s gotta peak somewhere. We can’t still be having the best sex of our lives in our eighties. Our hips wouldn’t take it. Mine can barely take it now.

It’s weird to think of Thistle as an eighty-year-old woman, knitting in a rocking chair on her porch. Weirder still to think of me beside her. But it feels more possible with every passing day. When we finally fall asleep, I dream that we’re on a little boat, out in Galveston Bay. The sun makes the sea sparkle. Thistle is reading a book, while I keep my eyes to the horizon, watching dark clouds creep in.

I wake up alone.

This is not abnormal, and it takes me a minute to remember someone is supposed to be here.

Thistle. When I fell asleep, her arm was across my chest and her legs were tangled up with mine. Now she’s gone. I reach over to the other side of the single mattress. No one.

For a horrible moment I think I dreamed the whole thing. Last night, and tonight. Maybe Thistle still hates me. Or maybe she never existed. After our last case together she became my imaginary friend—perhaps she always was. I’m sane enough to know I’m crazy, but I’m never sure just how much.

No. The sheets are warm. She was here.

I roll onto the floor. Pull on a shirt and some pants—it’s too cold to walk around in the nude—then I go looking for Thistle.

I open the bathroom door, only remembering half a second later that it would probably have been polite to knock first. But she’s not there.

I check the bathtub, suddenly worried that I forgot to drain it. Empty. She hasn’t fled after seeing eighty gallons of melted human. Or, if she did, she drained the tub first.

The clock in the living room says it’s three am, so it’s really four. I peer out the front window. Thistle’s car is still here.

‘Reese?’ I whisper.

No answer.

The fear wells up from beneath me like groundwater. What if I hurt her? I’m a sleepwalker, partial to midnight snacks. What if I killed her?

I check the freezer. Lots of frozen meals past their sell-by. Bacon, hot dogs, mince. I rummage around, revealing a plastic sheet, Biggs’s head beneath it. No sign of anybody else.

I hear something from outside. I cover Biggs and slam the freezer shut.

The sound came from the backyard. I tiptoe over to the back door. It’s not locked—not even closed all the way. I widen the gap.

Thistle is sitting on the back step, huddled in her jacket, legs bare. It’s stopped raining, but it’s colder than ever. She looks up from her phone and smiles in the dark.