I heard heavy breathing coming up behind me and imagined for just one moment I’d turn and see Ezra.

Gran stood at the top of the steps in the doorway to my bedroom. The smell of coffee clung to her. I remembered the steaming mug, waiting downstairs on the kitchen table.

“Nyle?” Gran asked.

I glowered at my reflection. My hair crackled with static. How could I go see Ezra looking like a helicopter head?

Gran sat down beside Bayley on the window seat, the window seat Gramp had built for me.

I didn’t have time for one of our talks. I wanted to get downstairs. I grabbed a book. “Not now, Gran.”

“Right now,” Gran said.

I lay the book on my dresser.

“Ezra’s getting better.”

“So how come I can’t go see him?”

“You can. Just not yet.”

I sat on the edge of my bed and faced Gran. Bayley jumped off the window seat and padded over, leaping up next to me. He climbed into my lap, made a wobbly circle, and finally curled up.

Gran shifted. “How do you feel about Ezra?”

I held very still. “I wasn’t happy about his coming here in the beginning.”

Gran nodded.

“It was the room that worried me.”

“And it doesn’t worry you anymore?”

I thought about how much I loved going to his room. It had become Ezra’s room. Even though Mrs. Trent slept there, even though it had always been the back bedroom before. I realized I thought of it now as Ezra’s room.

“You two getting friendly?”

I shrugged.

“Too friendly?”

“Gran, are you going to give me ‘the talk’?”

“You’ve been around sheep long enough, you don’t need that talk, do you?”

Moonlight washed across Gran’s shoulders.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing you give it.”

“Maybe some other time. Nyle, what I want to say is, he’s going to leave sometime. You understand that. We can ask them to go now, before you two get any closer. He’s strong enough. They could leave anytime.”

“Can’t we afford to keep them?”

“That’s not it. As long as we can take care of ourselves, we’ll take care of them, too.”

“Then what? Where could they go, Gran? You said they don’t have anybody.”

Gran sat on the window seat, watching me.

“Nyle, death isn’t the only kind of leaving that hurts.”

I stroked the cat and tried blocking out what Gran was saying. “I know.” For an instant I thought about my father. “I know that. Gran, I only want Ezra to get better.”

“Good,” Gran said. “Then listen. The visiting nurse says Ezra needs to leave that room. He’s a fifteen-year-old boy. He needs to get out.”

I remembered, with all his exercising on Gramp’s canes, how Ezra never crossed the threshold into the hallway. Mrs. Trent still carried a bedpan back and forth to the bathroom for him.

I’d been afraid to go into that room. Ezra was afraid to leave it. “Outside frightens him,” I said.