His eyes flashed immediately to the door. Small and peaked, under the stairs like a portal, the door to a kingdom.

“Just don’t,” I said.

He knew what my family did. He didn’t need to see it.

I put his stuff in Mama and Lobo’s old bedroom, slinging his duffel bag down on the bed, on the quilt they hadn’t taken. Get the memories out. Get it over with, I thought. I thought the room might as well be used. I opened up the curtains. A flourish of dust, like a flock of birds taking off. Had it only been a year?

In the yard below the window rusted an old bathtub, once used for watering cows. It was edged in ice. At the bottom of the tub was a puddle of darkness, frozen solid. Once I had seen a fawn bed down beneath the window. I had not wanted to open the curtains the rest of the way, not wanted to startle the deer into running.

It had been a year since I had seen a fawn alive.

Grayson wandered into the room behind me, cast thudding on the wood floors. He was a loud ghost. I left him to look around, and started a fire in the stove like I had promised. I waited until the kindling caught, then fed the first split logs in. When I heard the crackle and felt the warmth, I straightened.

“I’ve got to go back to my own place,” I called to him. “Unload a few things. Phones don’t work so great around here. If you need anything before I get back...” I paused.

“I’ll come down to your house,” Grayson said.

He couldn’t, not with that injury, but we left it at that. I drove home, wondering what I had gotten myself into.

I didn’t know him; I had just met him; I felt sorry for him. These long days, longer and darker since Lisbeth left—they would only get darker and colder still. Grayson knew what Lobo and my mama did for money, what I did. Everyone knew, really. But knowing and seeing were two different things. I had brought Grayson to the farm, endangering everything.

Now he knew where the farm was. Now he could find it, or lead someone to it, or tell the wrong person about it without even realizing what he had done.