I remembered what my mama had said about the year she was born, a blizzard year when schools had closed for weeks. A woman disappeared walking from her house to her barn. A semi had been buried in drifts, found days later, the driver still alive. To get me to fall asleep at night, sometimes she would retell the story: how the roads were indistinguishable from fields—all were snowfields. How her own mama’s eyelashes froze. The animals began to starve. That was why the woman had disappeared, trying to get to the barn to take care of her animals. It wasn’t a story for children, but I had asked for it again and again.

“I wish that you were singing,” I said to Lisbeth.

She turned back to me. “I am singing. Every Sunday and Wednesday night.”

“I mean, for a larger audience. For people to really hear you. I wish you had gone to a city like you said.”

All that we had said, lying side by side in sleeping bags on the floor. It would be easier when we were older, we had decided. I could leave the farm, leave Lobo far behind. Grow what I chose. Lisbeth could sing on a stage wearing anything she wanted—eyeliner, a skirt that showed her knees.

“Oh, that was just talk,” Lisbeth said. She waved away the memories, her breath slowing beside me in the dark. She pointed to a van beside the company store. The tires had been stripped off this one, and the interior of the van fizzed yellow and red with sparks. I heard the drone of a machine. Someone was welding, I realized. “We’re working on that one. Trying to turn it into a radio station, to broadcast out. Your friend Grayson’s gonna help with that.”

“Grayson?” He never did get the ham radio to work.

Lisbeth seemed not to know that. “If we can get the radio station running, maybe we can reach other people. We can find out what they’re doing in other parts of the country. What we should do next.”

“You’re really good, Lisbeth,” I said. “I miss hearing you sing. I miss you.”

She took my hand. She wore fingerless gloves, hand-knitted. Did she spend her time doing that? Knitting? What a waste, if she did. Her fingers felt cold as roots in the ground. “You’re welcome to stay here, Wil,” she said.

“Have things changed around here?”

Her hand slackened around mine. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, can you wear pants now? Can you read whatever you want?”

“That doesn’t matter. In the long run, that’s not important to me. It’s just important that we stick together, help each other.”

I didn’t know which we she meant. “I have Jamey and Starla to look after now.”

“We can make a place for everyone.”

“Have you met Jamey?”

“Wil.” She tilted her head and looked at me straight-on.