If she continued like this, the room would claim both of them.

But she didn’t climb into her cot. She headed for the bathroom instead.

I put my book down on the flowered chair. Ezra looked smaller than he had the day before, more shrunken—emphasizing the droop of his eyes and the tiny moon-shaped scar over his brow. Every now and then a shudder ran through him, shaking his body under the blankets.

I stood for a while, reluctant to go near. At last I approached his bed. Picking up the washcloth, I dipped it into the bowl of cool water.

I touched the cloth to Ezra’s lips, careful that my fingers did not brush his skin. He made a sound, a kind of groan, deep down in his throat, but he didn’t open his eyes.

“It’s me. Nyle Sumner. I came yesterday.” I touched the cloth to Ezra’s lips again.

“I’ve come to read some more. Would you like to hear?”

No response.

I remembered Gramp in this room. He gave up eating near the end. He liked sucking on chips of ice, though. His mouth was dry, he said. I’d wrap ice cubes in a towel and beat on them with a hammer till they slivered. Gramp would lay in bed, propped up, quietly sucking. He stared out the window while I talked about everything I could think of to hold him here. To hold him to life. Every evening before I left him, I’d tell him to wait for me, I’d be back in the morning.

He died anyway.

Gran didn’t even cry. She got up the very next day and moved every length of sheep fence on our property.

And finally, after the funeral, after everybody went home and left us, I pulled my boots on and went out, and I moved fences too.

I gave Ezra a little more water, wiping my wet hands on my jeans.

Rain tapped with a steady rhythm on the metal roof above our heads. Clean rain. Radiation-free rain.

Pong. Pong. Pong. I wanted to listen. I wanted to watch it. I hoped it would turn to snow. I started slowly toward the window. We didn’t need to keep the curtain closed anymore; we didn’t need to protect Ezra from radiation. He was safe, all of us outside the contamination zone were safe. I reached out to yank the curtain open and let in the good dark, the clean dark.

Mrs. Trent appeared at my side. “Do not touch that, please,” she said.

I jumped.

“He wishes this,” Mrs. Trent said. “That the curtain remain closed.”

Lowering myself into the flowered chair, I gripped the thin book in my fist and waited for her to leave.

Seven

When Muncie asked why I never came to visit, I ignored her rather than tell a lie. I couldn’t tell her the truth. People didn’t need much of a reason for leaving. How could I trust the Harrises to stay when they had so many good reasons to go?