The Christmas lockets hung around the necks of the dead. In the few minutes he had alone with the two of them he used his pocketknife to saw a snip of hair from a hank jerked out tight from his head, then divided the hair and placed half in each locket. Would have cut into his own chest for pieces of his heart if he could have done so. And bent and kissed the cool gold. It was the only thing he could think of. Would not kiss the cold faces. This, days later.

Joey had said of Foster, “Must’ve come from your side. LeBarons were all stout-built close-to-the-ground people. Mama’s side too.” Jamie said nothing but it was true, the boy was longlegged and longarmed with a high spread ribcage and shoulders like river rocks. With a stiff hard brush of hair, the shoeshine black of Joey’s but without her softening curls. Or Jamie’s. Eyes the remote blackness of a night creature. For all his length he was not awkward but a child who moved with deliberation, as if each motion however small had been meticulously considered and arranged before execution. What little he had owned of a child’s exuberance died with his mother and sister. After this, the enthusiasms he would display appeared slight, almost superficial, as if he did not care one way or the other. In fact, Jamie was sure these few things deeply mattered, mattered so intently the boy was ready to deny them rather than admit their importance. He was quiet.

That winter had groaned on, storm following storm. The snow did not shrink but settle. A thaw in March and then winter again right on into the first week of May. So much snow the trains stopped running through the Notch for a time. That in February. Foster out to school when he could, Jamie running whiskey when he could. As much as he could he did during the daylight. The boy would not be alone in the house. Those few nights they rode together, the dark packed snow of the roads in the lights, the rising banks of snow either side and the black night lost above. The snowbanks higher than the headlamps’ reach. During that time, Jamie did not like having Foster with him, felt the boy had no place within those things even if all the boy did was ride or wait in the car. And that first winter, that non-spring, what Jamie liked least and would not allow himself to examine too closely was the idea that his boy was protecting him. That Foster was more guide than passenger. That in some way the presence of the boy was a talisman, a ward against chance or misstep.

Summer came without benefit of spring. And Foster’s hand was burned and Jamie sent the Flood girl packing, watched her go down the track between the trees with the sunlight sifting light over her slow even pace. Jamie paid her, his voice thick as he thanked her and told her she’d be wanted no more. There was nothing else to say.