“What did the doctor say?” I asked Grayson.

“I’ve got to stay off it.”

“Why are you walking on it, then?”

“Because you’re all the way out here.”

Strings of bulb lights lit the company town behind us. Barrel fires bobbed in the darkness, and extension cords wove back and forth across the ground. Somebody was singing as they did their chores. Not Lisbeth.

“I’m not much on groups,” I said. “The Church still creeps me out a little.”

“Well, some things never change.”

“Anyway, I thought you would want to spend some time alone with your folks.”

When I had arrived back at the company town with the others, his parents had come out from one of the little houses, two people who looked like Grayson, but smaller, faded. We were the ones who had been on the road, but they were the ones who looked weary. His mama had worry lines cut deep into her face. His daddy sniffed back tears when he saw Grayson, saw it was really him—and that he was limping.

His daddy said nothing more than, Sorry, son. But his mama couldn’t stop apologizing, couldn’t stop asking him what had happened, how could this have happened? I didn’t know, after a while, if she meant his cast, the accident—or something more. How could we have left our homes? How could we have thought we could do better?

How could it still be cold?

This was what we told ourselves: nobody could have known. Nobody could have predicted. What an unusual time. What a ridiculous time. This was one for the record books. When we wrote new books, we would say: summer was hot sand and burning pavement, growing food outside in the air, warm earth breaking in our hands like bread. We got sunburns that flushed and freckled us; we built machines to cool us. They sent chemicals into the air.

How could we write that, explain that, to a baby like Starla? What would she remember? Jamey had said she was a summer birth.

Jamey and Starla had disappeared into the crowd of women as soon as they had arrived at the town, fussed and fawned over. I expected to find Starla, the next time I saw her, in new clothes, her hair washed and festooned with ribbons, her belly full of cookies. If they had cookies here. I expected Jamey would be more crabby than usual; the women would have pestered her about being saved, about bringing up her baby the right way.

“You should be with your folks,” I said to Grayson. “Spend some time with them. Why did you come looking for me?”

“Well, I have to say goodbye to you.”

There was a medical doctor with The Church. Grayson had friends at The Church. His folks were here. Of course he would stay.