Muncie, looking like a yellow toadstool in her raincoat and hat, shrugged. “You can’t,” she said.

I ran up the hill to catch her. But Muncie ignored me. She just kept climbing.

The Trents had come between us that quickly. I kicked with my heavy boot at a rock stuck in the road.

But I couldn’t tell her about Ezra and his mother. Maybe if Muncie didn’t already have so many problems. Maybe if radiation didn’t frighten her parents so much. But it did.

Instead of going straight home, I stayed out and started evening chores. Might as well. I couldn’t get any wetter.

When I finally came in, Gran met me at the kitchen door with an old towel. I wrapped the towel around my shoulders and headed straight for the woodstove.

Opening my backpack, I pulled the rumpled mask out and held it dangling in the air between us. “You heard about the plant?”

Gran nodded. “Throw the mask away,” she said. “I tossed mine out as soon as I heard.”

But I took the mask, instead, and hung it on a hook in the kitchen. “A remembrance,” I said. I hated throwing anything out.

“I’ve got hot chocolate for you. Dry off.”

I scrubbed my hair with the towel while Gran held out a mug of cocoa. Standing in front of the stove, I turned front to back, back to front. Steam curled off my jeans.

“Ezra and Mrs. Trent still here?” I asked, swallowing the warm, sweet liquid.

“Course they are,” Gran said. “Where do you think they’d be?”

I finished the cocoa, wiping the chocolate mustache from my upper lip with my thumb.

Climbing the steps to my bedroom, I peeled off my damp things and pulled on dry clothes. Over at the window I looked out across the farm, so soft in the gray wool of November. I stood there a long time before picking up Ezra’s book.

Well, here goes.

But I didn’t move toward the steps. I sat down instead on my bed and stroked Bayley.

My mother had died.

Gramp had died.

I lowered my cheek against Bayley’s soft side. He purred, massaging my ear with sound.

Ezra would die too.

Mrs. Trent met me outside the back bedroom.

“He is worse,” she said. “He has not taken any food in over a day. On the nightstand is a cloth and a bowl of sweetened water. Could you touch some to his lips while you are with him?”

I balked. Gran had promised I wouldn’t be concerned with Ezra’s physical needs. No bedpan. No cleaning up after Ezra when he vomited or had diarrhea. That was the deal. So what right did Mrs. Trent have, asking me to touch Ezra? My insides crawled at the thought of touching him.

But Mrs. Trent looked so exhausted.

I nodded grudgingly, not wanting to tend Ezra, but realizing tending him was one of those things I had to do even if I’d rather not. “I’ll see to it. Why don’t you rest awhile, Mrs. Trent?”