“I have never been so disappointed in you in my whole life. I know you have a friend here, but that does not give you permission to exploit this family’s worst moments. You have no idea— Jesus. How dare you?”

“Sean was there too.”

Silas laughed in the way that is nothing like a laugh. The kind of laugh that comes from the darkest part of the gut.

“I expect this kind of bullshit from Sean. Not you, Michaela.”

He let go of her hood and pushed his hands through his hair.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking. You’re right; I was trying to impress Ruth, and I let it get away from me.”

He turned his back to her.

“Just go. I can’t even look at you right now.”

“Dad—”

“Don’t tell your mother. You don’t even know—this would kill her.”

Mickey stood there for a moment, but then he heard her open the screen door, and hold it carefully so it wouldn’t slam shut.

Silas’s heart was too loud for him to go to bed. He paced the driveway for a few passes, thinking maybe he would take the bike out to cool off, but instead he struck out back across the lawn. He needed to check the clearing, see if they left any candles burning. That would be the last thing they needed, he thought as he trudged—a forest fire.

As he got closer, he had to shake off the feeling of walking backward. Not in the physical sense, but in the temporal. The setting was the same: same trees, full height well before Silas was even a figment of his mother’s imagination. Same moon, same lake. Sarah Kelly was the same. Same exactly, caught forever in that very night. In fact, the only thing that was different about her was that now she was gone.

When he reached the clearing, the illusion held. At first glance, the snuffed-out candles looked like wine coolers in the moonlight. The way the blanket was bundled and folded in the corners, it looked like abandoned clothes.

This place held on to its ghosts.

Silas gathered the candles and draped the blanket over his arm. And as he turned back, something caught his eye. A color in the water, red as a tongue. Red like a wound when you were waiting for the blood to come. He bent over and picked it up, gently twirling the stem to shake the water off.

There was no way Mickey could’ve known that Sarah loved poppies.

Only Lily would’ve known that.

PEYOTE

“WHO DO WE SHOW this to?” I asked, holding out KQ’s signed form.

“Me,” Felix said. He scanned the document and blinked again, which I was beginning to understand as less of a protective function and more of an information-processing one.