The construction site was located about a mile west of town, not far from a heavily used section of trail that followed the river and the road between two city parks. At night, in the dark, it was deserted, though Mano thought the way the moonlight glowed blue behind the clouds, the way it backlit the dark thatches of woody branches, made it more beautiful now. She was the lone human moving in the world, but she was not alone—the woods full of wary animals who knew how to stay both invisible and watchful. Mano used the fishing wire to hang the thicker branches by both ends, like trapeze bars, just above eye level. She had to climb the trees a bit, shimmy awkwardly, belly down, out onto the limbs, but she managed to get the placement she was looking for. She rolled a larger rock around for a stool and started hanging the corpses.

From one branch, she hung five dead trout, some by their tails, some by their gills. The moonlight reflected off the fish scales, lit the wet of the fish skin into a brilliant shine. She rushed together a series of fishing line macramé that she draped around tree trunks and limbs, filled with river-polished rocks. From another branch, Mano hung a single trout with crow feathers attached so that they radiated in all directions like night-black rays, and next to that, the dead kingfisher, strung up by each of its wings so that it looked bat-like in the shadows, nearly vampiric.

The dead animals and rocks hung at eye level, lifted so that the men could no longer look down on them. Impossible now for people to miss the horror of what they'd done. Mano lay down on the damp earth of the riverbank, tracked the moon's trajectory across the night sky, observed the shifting light against the terrible beauty of her sculpture. She squinted into the darkness, hoping she'd see the comet clearly, tail and all, but saw nothing. She felt achingly, utterly, alone.

SOMETIME JUST BEFORE DAWN, Mano made it to Ruth's, crawled onto the hidden trundle mattress she kept underneath her art desk, and fell asleep. She slept through to afternoon, woke with a pounding headache. Downstairs, Ruth was at the kitchen table with a ham and Swiss sandwich, a coffee mug, a Mason jar full of homemade sweet pickles. The evening newspaper and a hand of solitaire were spread in front of her.

Mano felt a bit ashamed of herself. “Four o'clock already? I'm surprised you didn't get me up earlier.” She got a coffee cup from the shelf, grateful for Ruth's odd hours, the house perpetually full of fresh coffee, a bottomless pot.

“Rick called,” Ruth said. She raised an eyebrow, then looked down at her cards. “And Keith.”

Mano sat across from her. Ruth added a generous pour of Irish cream to her coffee, then Mano's, her face lined with concern. “Listen, Mano, the only good I got from my marriage was the kids, but divorce hasn't exactly been a picnic, either. Just be sure you know what you're hoping for, okay?”