“Get back in bed,” Mom said. I knew she would get mad if I didn’t listen, if I didn’t give her what she wanted. “Go to sleep,” she said.

Soon, from in my bedroom, I heard Paige say someone was pulling in. I pressed my ear against the bedroom door. The back door peeled open, and I heard Grammy speak. “I didn’t mean to,” she was saying, crying. “If I’d known.”

“It’s okay,” Mom said. “Frances, come on. Come into the living room.”

“Who are you?” Grammy said. “They said he’s dead. Drowned!”

Grammy stopped crying and then she screamed, one short quick yell, and it sickened me more than all those cigarettes.

There were men’s voices. Tribal police. EMTs. They spoke over Grammy’s questions. It was hard to make out what was said. Something about her car being totaled, something about finding her shivering and screaming down by the river. The officer spoke louder, and I heard him much better. He said when they touched her, when they tried to gently pull her away from the riverbank, she pointed at them, asked them to help her find him in the water, asked them to call to him, and then she stuck her thumb and finger under her tongue and whistled to the stars.

And then Grammy whistled just like that in the house, and everyone quieted.

“Where is he?” she said.

“Grammy,” Paige said. “Where’s who?”

“Grammy? I’m not your damn Grammy.”

When the officers and the EMTs left, Mom tried to get Grammy from the kitchen to Paige’s bed, but Grammy kept on talking, kept on crying.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” she said.

“You’re okay,” Mom said. “Come on, now. Let’s get you changed.”

I tensed against my door. Footsteps walked closer to the hallway, closer to Paige’s room.

“I can’t!” Grammy said. “No one saw him today but me.”

I pulled myself up off the floor by the doorknob, and I opened the door. Mom and Paige were on either side of Grammy, whose pants were wet and covered with mud. Mom stomped toward me, pointing to get back in the bedroom, but Grammy stopped her.

“Robbie,” Grammy said.

The way she stared at me, the relief in her puffy eyes. I wondered what that felt like. You could see it, absolutely see it. But to feel it. Like waking from a dream in which something hunted you—not a little, but violently hunted you—and when you sat up in bed you took a deep, shivering breath as crisp as a glass of ice water.

“It’s okay, Frances,” I said.

Grammy moved away from Paige, past Mom, and came to me, held my face in hands that didn’t look age-spotted, because the hallway light was off. “Why did they lie?” she said.