AT LAST, THE SUN starts to set. The golden light takes on a salmon hue, and the streaking clouds seem to be holding their breath. I think Fox is traveling on secondary roads, which are pitted with holes and bumps and the scars of war. Claire is a dead weight in my lap, and now Jack leans against my shoulder, mouth open and drooling a little on my crisp navy jacket. I turn my head just in time to catch Fox looking at me in the rearview mirror, before his gaze turns back to the road before him.

“How much farther?” I ask softly.

“Not long. We’re getting near the coast.”

“But how many minutes?”

“About twenty.”

Some words come to my lips, but I bite them back.

“How’s Iris?” I say instead.

He glances at her. “Holding strong.”

Which means she’s alive, I guess. Her head leans back against the top of the seat—her eyes are closed. Is her skin flushed, or do the colors of sunset melt on her beautiful skin, that creamy wonder I always admired and often envied? Nobody has a skin like Iris, as flawless as alabaster, not a line or a crease, each emotion ebbing and flowing along its surface. Now it’s perfectly still. The baby lies secure in his swaddle on the seat between them. He doesn’t make a sound. The only noise in the car—apart from the faint rasp of respiration, from my soft questions and Fox’s low replies—comes from the trunk, where Digby rustles and thumps like a man in a fever dream.

Well, let him thrash.

I look back at the rearview mirror, just in time to catch Fox watching me again. This time he holds my gaze for a beat or two, because we’re the only ones left awake inside this peculiar world—even Kip dozes off against the window glass—and because it seems we might be in love.

AT LAST FOX PRESSES the brakes and turns off onto an unpaved road. The car lurches and wallows, waking everybody up. Grunts and groans float through the back of the seat from the trunk. Gregory starts to cry and Iris finds the strength to gather him up in her arms.

“Poah Thathdy,” Claire says solemnly around her thumb, which she’s stuck into her mouth.

“Poor Daddy,” I agree.

“We’re driving on sand!” Jack announces, and sure enough, when I look through the window at the blue-tinted world, that sliver of time between sunset and twilight, I see nothing but pale dunes and tall seagrass.

“You’re sure this is the place?” I ask.

“Yes,” Fox replies.

He stops the car and tells us to wait.

“Wait for what? I want to get out of here. I need some air.”

“I’m just going to scout ahead for a moment. Could you pass me the flashlight under the seat?”