He stopped inside his daughter’s bedroom, found the purple walls too purple, then doubled back into the hallway. He stood very still on the landing—as still as he could—until he could hear it again. That thumping. A beating—quiet and close. Wholly separate from the headache pounding in his skull. Almost…like in small-town movie theaters, where you can hear, during quiet moments in movies, the clicking of the film running through the projector in the back. Which distracts you, and keeps pulling you back to the reality that this is not real, as though you and you alone realize this truth.

He shook his head hard, grimacing from the pain that went with it…trying to use that pain like bleach, to clean his thoughts…but the thumping. The throbbing. It was everywhere, all around him.

The dogs too. Acting strange around him. Pap and Gertie, the big, bumbling Saint Bernards. Growling as they would when some strange animal came into the yard.

Ann-Marie came up later, alone, finding him sitting at the foot of their bed, his head in his hands like a fragile egg. “You should sleep,” she said.

He gripped his hair like the reins of a mad horse and fought down the urge to berate her. Something was wrong in his throat, and whenever he lay down for any length of time, his epiglottis seized up, cutting off his airway, suffocating him until he choked himself back to breathing. He was terrified now of dying in his sleep.

“What do I do?” she asked, remaining in the doorway, her palm and fingers pressing against her own forehead.

“Get me some water,” he said. His voice hissed through his raw throat, burning like steam. “Lukewarm. Dissolve some Advil in it, ibuprofen—anything.”

She didn’t move. She stood there staring, worrying. “Aren’t you even a little better…?”

Her timidity, which normally aroused strong protective instincts in him, now moved him only to rage. “Ann-Marie, get me some goddamn water, and then take the kids outside or something but keep them the hell away from me!”

She scurried away in tears.

When Ansel heard them go outside into the darkened backyard, he ventured downstairs, walking with one hand clamped on the handrail. She had left the glass on the counter next to the sink, set on a folded napkin, dissolved pills clouding the water. He brought the glass to his lips two-handedly and forced himself to drink. He poured the water into his mouth, giving his throat no choice but to swallow. He got some of it down before gagging on the rest of the contents, coughing onto the sink window overlooking the backyard. He gasped as he watched the splatter drip down the glass pane, distorting his view of Ann-Marie standing behind the kids on the swings, staring off into the darkened sky, breaking her crossed arms only occasionally to push low-swinging Haily.