Lance trembles not from the cold, but from an urge he can’t name. It’s like the indecision in his heart over Robbie and the suggestion of interest he saw in the kitchen. Does he want to go toward it, or veer away?

His head doesn’t have an answer, but apparently his feet do, because suddenly he’s climbing up the bank.

It’s easier than he remembers. He’s bigger and stronger, after all, than he was at sixteen. It just takes six long, careful steps, like lunges on an incline, and he’s up. The burn in his thighs is faint, almost pleasant.

The tree line is more dense than he remembers. The natural consequence of lack of maintenance, he supposes; opportunistic evergreens and young oak trees have created a waist-high underbrush that he has to paw through, and it snags in the coveralls and coat he’s wearing, distracting him so that he doesn’t get his first look at the house until he’s already a dozen feet from the tree line.

Lance had vaguely assumed that the empty house would be moldering, like the old farmsteads in various stages of disintegration on the Chases’ property. The places that had been in half-decent shape had been frequent playgrounds for him and Danny. In hindsight, they’d been lucky never to break their legs in a cellar cavity camouflaged with brush, or trod on a rusty nail as they’d climbed through various newer ruins.

But the house isn’t derelict. Or, at least, it’s not in much worse shape than in all of the years Lance lived there. Also, the house isn’t empty. There’s a path through the otherwise unmown yard to the door, obvious even beneath the snow. And there’s an unmistakable light in the small square windows that stare at Lance like eyes, just as they always used to when he skulked home reluctantly after a day or days of respite with Danny and his brothers.

The last thing he notices is the strange, skeletal shape of a snow-draped bike with training wheels before he unsticks his feet and retraces his steps, fast. Around here, people are likely to point a gun at a stranger who comes out of the trees, and they’re very likely to shoot rather than ask questions.

Lance does have questions, though. Who’s living there? How did he not know? He curses his father, imagining some strange under-the-table deal, though that seems absurd under the circumstances. He’d seen the man himself, five or ten minutes before his arrest. He was hardly in a position to be acting as a landlord.

Maybe they’re squatters? But then, how did they get the utilities on?

Maybe the light was just a trick of the eye.

For some reason, it’s that bike and training wheels that Lance can’t get out of his uneasy mind. He rushes across the ice, which doesn’t show signs of splitting this time, but he still feels like the earth could drop out from beneath him at any second even when he’s safely on the other side. He breaks into a run, like a spooked horse fleeing blindly to the last place it felt safe. He doesn’t break stride until he’s crossed the Chases’ meadow and rushed up the deck stairs to the hayloft, where he leans against the hayloft door.