“Promise.”

“Good.” She planted a big wet one right on his face, making silly slurping noises that made him laugh.

“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s make popcorn and watch movies!”

“Yay!”

* * *

He fell asleep on the double-wide sofa around nine-fifteen that night, and Lucy set about placing the weapons at what she hoped were strategic locations.

The .45 she kept on her person, along with the knife (she decided to switch the five-inch for the ten-inch with the serrated edge), which she strapped to her boot.

Double-checking the security system, she took the Mossberg shotgun and placed it on the floor in front of the sofa, then snuggled down next to Randy, covering them with a heavy quilt.

Kylie’s birthday was now nearly over and they were still safe.

She tried to take comfort in that.

Staring into the dying embers of the fire, she tried to remember the rest of the Shakespeare passage, couldn’t, and so tried to sleep.

Somewhere around five-ten a.m. she nodded off, a part of her still very much aware of every sound, every movement, every vibration made by the wind outside as a second dusting of snow covered the world with a fresh layer of crystalline white.

* * *

Next morning, it was buttermilk pancakes and sausage for breakfast, then building another fire, then they built a fort from boxes and pillows, then more movies and a Star Wars spaceship-racing game on the Super-Nintendo system she surprised him with.

It was a great day.

As Randy fell asleep next to her on the couch that night, a Gordon Lightfoot CD playing softly on the portable boom-box, she looked out into the snowy night—if Sarah had been here, she’d have been raising holy hell to get out there and build a snowman—

—Grief fills up the room of my absent child—

—and thought: Where are you?

Kylie’s birthday was one day gone. Maybe Mr. Hands had given up trying to find them.

Is that it? Will there be mercy, then?

Silence.

She didn’t think that could be good, no matter how you looked at it. The two of them were connected in a way few people could understand. She had created him and he, in return, had sustained her.

I know you can hear me, sense me, so why won’t you answer?

She drifted off to the refrain of “If You Could Read My Mind.”

* * *

She came awake around five-thirty when her bladder announced to her in no uncertain terms that she’d had too much Pepsi with the pizza they made for dinner. She pulled herself up—careful not to jostle Randy—and sat on the edge of the sofa. Her side hurt like hell from where the gun and holster had been pressing into it while she slept and her head was screaming for aspirin.

She rose slowly and shuffled toward the bathroom—leaving the door open so she could lean forward to see Randy—then she pulled a bottle of water from one of the bags and found the aspirin.