A phase was ending. A new one waited. Gradually my mind fell away from the television’s glowing murmur, and sank into darkness.

I woke up to a crick in my neck and a cold room—Krystal, ever the penny-pincher, never turned on the heat or AC unless she absolutely had to. I decided to make my escape. Outside it was just coming up on daylight, still shadowy in the living room. I stretched and walked into the kitchen, not bothering to tiptoe. Krystal always slept heavily, a skill I envied. I put a pot of coffee on for her and left her a note—I’d been called into work for an extra shift.

It was bullshit, of course. I went home. My neighborhood looked like a movie set on Sunday mornings, the sun coming up over the trailers that sat silent and still, sleeping off the night before. As soon as I was inside the door I called the financial adviser and lawyer but got answering machines. It was Sunday morning and no one was in, but an odd feeling kept pressing at me, an urge to execute my list of preparations like a ritual. I feared that if I did not, if I slowed down to doubt for a moment, if I did not pay proper respect to the luck that had befallen me, I risked breaking the reality. Maybe I would realize I had seen the wrong numbers on the winning ticket, or maybe the numbers themselves would change. Luck was always punishing me. This time I desperately wanted to appease it. So to keep a sense of momentum I went down my to-do list that I had made long ago, in anticipation of my winning.

After a while I sat back in my recliner and stared into nothing for a little bit, sour morning light filtering in. The sky was clouding over. The quiet hummed around me.

I found myself standing before the door of my erstwhile bedroom. I didn’t recall walking the short distance. Maybe I’d dozed off and sleepwalked. That happened to me sometimes, just like it happened to Chrissy in Season 1. I turned the knob and went inside.

My collection looked sad in the mean light of dawn. But I saw what it could be. What it would be. What I felt then was bigger, beyond any mere universe’s gift, beyond any energy that might grace or punish me on a whim. I could see my future before me, and it was a one-road path—a labyrinth, maybe, but a single way out, a total escape from my present self. Everything was leading me there.

My phone buzzed just then. It was Krystal. I didn’t pick up. And she didn’t leave a message.

I woke shortly after dawn one day in March and looked out my window at the mountain place, and I saw the skeleton of my dream rising slowly, slowly, one beam at a time, out of fog. The air was chilly and deep, like autumn, and the distant sound of a hammer came at me, the lazy drone of a saw. Because it was so early the sky was still gray, and the tops of the black trees disappeared in a swirl of fog. On the ground, figures in hard hats milled about, a few empty-handed, a couple more carrying long planks of wood on their shoulders, while others knelt down, attuned to their work—a bevy of strangers moving in a weird, syncopated rhythm, the sounds of work floating in hushed, far-off tones. The outline of the building’s foundation had been laid and I could see the edges rising up. Off to the side Ray stood talking in a huddle with two other workers, pointing at an unrolled blueprint.