Alana steels herself. This will not be easy. But she has to do it. There is no one else.

She gets out of the car and walks up to the trailer.

There are other trailers in the park, over here by the woods near Shadow Bluffs, that look like well-kept, tiny homes. They have little gardens and tiny porches attached to their front steps. They’re places where grandchildren can visit. Alana can imagine the small, busy lives of the people inside, people who have limited their options on purpose, who are happy within a more manageable world.

This trailer is nothing like that. Its metal roof sags, it is flecked with rust and patches of bonding agent, and its windows are crusted with hard-water stains that don’t wash away. It resembles nothing so much as an aluminum can crumpled and abandoned on the gravel.

She knocks on the door and the whole structure shakes. She knocks again, and waits. Just when she is about to give up and go back to her car, the door opens and Alana’s father appears.

Richard Bright blinks. It takes him a moment to realize who he’s looking at. He beams as if he’s won the lottery.

He throws open the screen door, and takes her in his arms and hugs her for the longest time. He breaks away to look at her again. “I missed you,” he says.

“I know,” she says, and follows him inside.

Alana’s father was the one who took care of her, who did all the necessary things that were too mundane for her mother. He always had a complete nutritious dinner on the table by six, and all the appointments on the big calendar in the kitchen. He filled out her permission slips, bought her clothes, and packed her lunches. He bandaged her wounds, drilled her on the creatures in the big, leather-bound book called the Compendium, and held her when she cried in pain or frustration or fear.

She remembers the first time she was away from home, living on her own, without her parents or a roommate. She’d been unpacking all day and she didn’t want fast food and she didn’t really feel like cooking, so she made a bowl of chocolate pudding. She sat down on the floor of her cruddy little studio apartment because she didn’t own a couch and ate it in front of the TV. She called her dad during a commercial and told him, “I’m having chocolate for dinner and there’s nothing you can do about it.” He laughed like a little kid. It was the most irresponsible thing she’d ever done in her life, up to that point. And he was so happy for her.

She wipes away a few tears. If he notices, he doesn’t comment on it.