Moving with slow heaviness, Elizabeth gets up, squats, and picks up the tape measure. Once she has made it back to standing, Don snatches the tape measure and remeasures the frame, something I get the sense he has already done several times now.

“I don’t think measuring it again will give you a different answer.”

“You sure about that?” he says, thumbing the measurement and shaking his head, holding it up for Elizabeth to see. “This is impossible. See? It keeps changing. It won’t just stay one length.”

She reaches out again for the tape measure, but he slaps her hand away. Throwing her hands into the air, she turns, goes back to the towels. “If you don’t want my help, fine. Just get that pane into the frame already, before we freeze to death.”

“I told you,” Don snarls, “it doesn’t fit. It needs to be done properly. You can’t just jam it in there and expect it to work.”

The chill of the room reaches out toward me. I want to close the door on them, but then Elizabeth says, quietly, “Do you want this to work?”

I have been eavesdropping too long. I turn, take a step to disappear down the hallway, but the floor groans under my foot, and they both snap their heads up to stare at me in the doorway.

Don’s eyes are dark, unreadable; Elizabeth has a hand on her belly.

“Everything going okay?” I ask nonchalantly, as if I’d only just stopped by to check on them.

Don’s eyes flick to his wife, then to the window, beyond which the black night looms. “Fine,” he grits out, picking up the glass pane by its razor edges to slide it into the jamb. This time, it fits. He steps back, staring at it, his eye twitching.

A sigh of relief escapes Elizabeth, and she sits back down.

“All right,” I say, turning again to leave—only when I do, I am frozen by the boy standing at the other end of the hallway, blocking my path.

Though his face is a pale blur and his mouth nothing but a thin black snarl and his eyes just two empty pits, a terrible familiarity washes over me—not just the familiarity of having seen him so many times, now, in this house, but the familiarity that comes when you’ve just looked upon a child’s father and then at the child itself, and seen the resemblance there.

Even though I cannot see his face, that resemblance feels uncanny—the temper, the violence simmering just beneath the surface. I look from one to the other—Donovan’s back is to me as he rechecks the window, running a hand over the edge, and for a moment I consider imploring him to turn around, to come look upon his son, but the words choke up in my throat—and I feel as if I am caught between two mirrors, and I wonder just how much Julian is his father’s son.

Outside, it starts to snow.