“How are we going to take care of the farm and the boy, too?” I asked. In my heart I knew that boy was going to die. Sure as ewes lamb in spring, he was going to die.

“Mrs. Trent and the boy have no place to go,” Gran said. “No home. No money. They left everything behind in Cookshire. Everything, Nyle. There’s a lot of folks scared of them. Afraid of the radiation they might be carrying.”

I chased a piece of pie crust around the table with my fingertip, thinking Muncie and her parents counted among the ones afraid.

“Mrs. Trent’s not sick. She’ll tend to the boy’s medical needs,” Gran said. “But he needs more than medicine.”

“How old is he?” I asked.

“Fifteen, I think.”

An oily darkness closed over me. He’s fifteen, two years older than me, and he’s going to die in that room.

Gran sat back in the kitchen chair and studied a cobweb stretching from one ceiling beam to another.

“Why did this have to happen?” I asked.

Gran looked at me. “You’re not the only one asking that question.”

“I don’t make friends easy, Gran,” I said. Especially not with boys.

I didn’t want to go back to that room. “Can’t we put them someplace else?”

Gran looked around the low-ceilinged kitchen. “Where else? In the living room? That’s freezing. They need warmth, and they need a bathroom nearby.”

Gran got up from the table. Her bun sagged in its net at the base of her neck. She put my uneaten cheese back in the refrigerator and dumped my demolished pie into the compost bucket beside the sink.

Gran stood at the kitchen window, looking up across the back pasture, up toward Muncie’s house. She spoke so softly I had to lean forward in my chair to hear her.

“I know you’d rather not get involved in this mess, Nyle. But sometimes you have to do things you’d rather not.”

“Well, I’m not making friends with a dead boy.”

“He’s not dead yet,” Gran said.

“He will be if he stays in that room.”

“Look,” Gran said, “it’s good to be with people, Nyle, even if they aren’t going to be around for long. Especially if they’re not going to be around for long. Makes being here on this earth worthwhile.”

“Is that where Caleb’s been all afternoon?” I asked. “Down in the back bedroom with them?”

Gran nodded. “He’s got them cornered back there like a couple of stray sheep.”

“Good,” I said. “Let Caleb watch over them.”

“Caleb’s a fine dog, but he can’t do everything that needs doing,” Gran said.

“I know that.”

A truck rattled down our driveway, its brakes squealing as it stopped outside the kitchen door.

“That’ll be Red,” Gran said, pulling on her coat and boots.

I shrugged into my outside clothes, grabbed my mask, and came up behind her.

Pulling her own mask up from around her neck, Gran led the way out the door.