“It’s a secret,” Karen said.

They spent their days together building, as Perley’s red wound healed to yellow, as the sutures began to wear away and fall off. To Helen’s unmasked joy, Karen documented her care of him in the Best Practices Binder, dating her entries, detailing the whole process. “You’ll have a scar,” Karen said. “But why shouldn’t you?”

“Toxic,” Perley said.

Rudy brought us an orange tomcat, mean and squint-eyed. It peed all over the house, but it didn’t get rid of the black snakes, who’d all come back. We didn’t notice them so much because of the garbage bags, the window frames, the bike, the insulation, the utility sink, the high chair, the old sleeping bags, all of it soaked in cat pee. Underneath all the junk, the snakes switched their tails and smelled with their tongues, trying to stay warm as the days turned cold.

It was mid-December, dark early, freezing by dinnertime. But our house was overrun, so we built the campfire big those evenings, and we put on our coats, and we ate our supper outside. Perley took up his nightly reports to Karen again, going over what he’d learned that day. “Cut on the outside edge,” he said. “Make the line disappear.” His wound had healed to where we didn’t dress it anymore. His crescent scar cast a shadow down his cheek, luminous in the firelight. “For finish work, countersink before driving in your screws.” He demonstrated how to use her sheepsfoot blade on a chair leg. Shadowboxing, he demonstrated his sucker punch. Karen said, “That’s not sportsmanlike. Watch this.” She turned a somersault over one shoulder, came up on both feet, knees bent, ready to strike.

“Where’d you learn that?” asked Helen.

“Just something I picked up on my travels,” Karen said.

After, wrapped up warm in our coats, I held him. I didn’t know the password, but I held him. I rocked him. I carried Perley up to the camper, where earlier Karen had stoked his fire and shut the stove down so that it would be warm when he came to bed. I whispered his name. I carried him to his door. He raised his mending face. I leaned down to kiss it. It was like going on a date, the chaste kind I had liked to imagine as a kid, before I knew what would be required of me. He waved goodbye. He went inside. He latched the door.