“Sister,” Ruth says. “There’s nothing I’ll ever be able to do to help you.”

Sully is now by my side. He bends to click cuffs onto my hands.

“What? What are you doing?”

“It’s for your own protection, Alex,” he says.

My mind flash floods with the faces of children. All the ones I’ve rescued from horrible homes, all the ones who’ll languish now that I’m not there to help them. Buster Floyd. Oh God, they’ll give him back to his rancid, lowbrow parents, who’ll fill him with toxins and ignorance. He’ll suffocate in their dirt and misery.

“Morris, I’m your very best protection worker. You know this!” But it’s as if I’m speaking buried under a great weight: nobody’s listening. I feel Sully’s hands on my wrists, moving me. Just five weeks ago, his touch felt electric with chemistry. Now it’s cold and unplugged. He walks me toward the door.

“You are not my very best protection worker, Alex,” Morris says. “You’re a fraud.”

Minerva sits in a chair, her fat body puddled around. I want to pull her hair as I pass, but I don’t. Instead, as Sully leads me away, I jam my sneaker against the doorframe and lock eyes with Ruth.

“I’m the guarder,” I say. “That’s my job.” It’s the role I was given when Pim handed me the peg, and we never changed roles again.

She wipes a tear from her cheek. My sister sees me, sees my pain, but she’ll leave me hanging, as always. It’s Horizon all over again.

“I’m the guarder,” I say again, this time more quietly, as Sully moves me through the doorway and out into the corridor. There’s nothing more to be said.

RUTH

THREE WEEKS LATER

When they give Will back to me, it’s like being handed my own heartbeat. I can’t stop crying. But I feel more alive than I’ve felt in years. In the weeks that follow, we walk together through the streets of Moses River, his plum little body cocooned in a warm wrap against me. It’s the end of October. The weather is clinging to a golden soulfulness, everything deepening, mellowing.