A stone lifted up, out, off of me as they disappeared past the tree line, the last live human beings I would see for three years. Then they were gone, the sound of their engines fading into silence. I fell to my knees and wept.

Nearly a month after my last encounter with Krystal, the one where she tripped on my porch, I decided to go see her.

Two months had passed since I’d won the lottery. I had just bought the new place, and my packed duffel sat on the floor of my truck. It would have been easier had I simply left for the mountain at that time without seeing her again, and the possibility of doing so had crossed my mind. But then Geannie and Jim would creep into my head, and I didn’t like them there, or the implication of them being there, and I didn’t like the idea that they might always give me trouble if I left things badly. While packing up my stuff I discovered some dishes she had lent me over the years that I never returned, including the damn chili bowl from our dinner months ago when I first confronted her about the house. I figured returning dishes was as good an excuse as any to visit her.

It was halfway through December, exactly ten days before Christmas. Bad weather had come on early—that white, deep-winter cold that usually saves itself for January—and snow flurries wisped at my windshield as I pulled up to her apartment.

I noticed her parking space was empty, but I got out of my truck and knocked on her door anyway. No answer. There was no sign of life anywhere. I noticed the curtains in her kitchen windows were gone, and when I looked in, the room was bare.

I turned around. The sun had set, though it wasn’t yet five o’clock. For a whole minute I stood there with my back to her door, looking up at the sky.

I knew where she was. I didn’t want to go. For the past few weeks I had enjoyed a clear head—almost the way I used to feel before the robbery, before the insomnia and bad dreams, before the occasional car backfiring or loud noise from someone dropping a pallet would elicit a short, shrill cry from my throat, after which I’d shake for a good five minutes. That still happened every now and then. When it did I got embarrassed and pretended I was not myself, and that whatever was happening was happening to someone else, some weak bitch I didn’t even know, and a lot of times that worked and a lot of times it didn’t.

There hadn’t been any of that, though, for nearly a month. Mostly I avoided thinking about the before-times, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. On nights like that one, when I was looking for Krystal—a clawing, cloying nostalgia overtook me. There’s something about being outside as the sun sets on a winter night, the weird magic of it that makes a person want to watch Charlie Brown trim his dumb Christmas tree and eat cookies while tucked under a plaid blanket. That kind of shit. I hated getting sad over stuff like that. I don’t think I even had an experience like that as a kid, it was just something my brain stole from a holiday commercial. But these weak moments crept in nevertheless, and I knew going to Geannie’s house would make it worse.