I didn’t hold Bedogi too often. I usually held him when Mom and Frick and I were outside on those steps, avoiding the hospital calls. Mom would hand him to me so she could have a smoke in the shed, and Frick always followed her. With Bedogi born, Mom was different. She didn’t smoke in the house, and she stopped drinking and began to sip tea. Frick too, but only because Mom told him to or he’d have to leave, and the only place he had to go was his unfinished camp some miles north off the reservation.

When I held the boy I whispered to him, gave him hope about his mother. “She’ll get better,” I said to him on the steps. I remember the first time I told him that. How could I not remember? It was a cool night in late September, going on 9:00 PM, and I held him while Mom and Frick were in the shed, arguing about something. (It was Frick wanting to go out, to drink, but she kept telling him he didn’t need it.) As I told the boy his mother would get better, Mom came out of the shed and asked what I had said. I told her what I said, thinking I had said something wrong, and Mom took Bedogi from me and said the same exact thing.

“She’ll get better is right. Come on, David, let’s go inside.”

We all went indoors, and the kitchen lights were bright and I squinted. Bedogi had fallen asleep in Mom’s arms and still slept when Mom called for Paige. He stayed sleeping when Paige didn’t respond, when Mom called her name again, louder. The third time Mom yelled for Paige, Bedogi woke and gurgled out a thick yelp.

“David,” Mom said. “Go wake your sister.”

Paige wasn’t there—not even an outline of a body pressed into the tightly made bed.

“She’s gone,” I said to Mom. I stood in the hallway, like I was going to go back and check her room one more time as if my eyes had missed her.

“What do you mean she’s gone?” Mom said. She yelled Paige’s name once more, and Bedogi let out a loud shriek.

“Shh, shh,” Mom said.

Mom got up from the couch. I moved out of her way as she came down the hall to Paige’s room and peered into the darkness. She said Paige’s name again.

But Paige was gone. Her bedroom window was closed, but the screen was popped out and lying on the front lawn.

Frick went and got it, but Mom told him not to put it back in, that Paige might come back later and she wouldn’t be getting in through the locked doors. “How dare she?” Mom said. “How dare she?”