Lydia sat down on the ottoman with Justin and rubbed his back, round and round in a circle.

“I bet they don’t know he’s thinking about playing with you,” Asher added.

“I want him back, though,” Justin said.

“The main thing is he’s alright,” Asher said. “Any day now he might come running through the woods and right up on the porch. If he can ever find his way back, he will.”

6

6

That night, Asher dreamt of his brother.

Luke was caught in the dark, rocking waters, struggling to stay afloat among all the debris. Asher was standing on the ridge and he could see Luke out there, screaming, his face pleading with Asher to help him, to do anything. I’m drowning, he cried out. I’m dying. Yet Asher did not move. He wanted to, but his legs and arms would not cooperate. And then, the river swallowed Luke and he was gone.

Asher shuddered awake, found himself slumped on the couch where exhaustion had overcome him. He remembered now, the weariness easing down over his body the way a midday cloud shadow can be seen, moving over a pasture. The tiredness, rock-heavy, from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. Justin had gone to sleep there with him, his legs stretched across Asher’s lap, mouth thrown open in complete rest, a soft little snore revving in his nostrils. Lydia had thrown an afghan over them.

The house ticked with the kind of silence that happens only in the middle of the night.

The dream had left him with a grief he could not shed. He slipped outside and sat on the top step of the porch, looking up at the night sky. No stars now, as clouds had moved back in. The valley was still and black; he could not even see the trees just past the porch.

Ever since the men had come to the house he had been thinking of Luke.

Ten years without his brother. He thought of their mother sitting at the yellow kitchen table while Luke danced across the red linoleum. Asher was laughing and clapping—only twelve, Luke four years older. Their mother’s mouth clenched into a wrinkled line, like a pink drawstring purse. “I Don’t Want to Know” on the radio—all those drums and that steering guitar and the hands clapping and the voices of Fleetwood Mac—and Luke was moving every part of himself, twisting, shaking, laughing with his head thrown back. Asher didn’t know what had come over his brother; he only ever danced like this when it was just the two of them. But the music had been too good and so he had jumped up to dance.

Their mother darted up quick as a spider, snapped off the radio in one sharp click of her wrist.

The word she had said to Luke then.

(faggot)