He had a growing feeling his father had been rather a rogue. But the flip side of rogue, too: a tiresome bastard. His mother had been in the lighthouse when he was a child, and her presence was like sitting on a knitting needle sometimes. But she had been there. “Dear Mom …”

That evening, when the rain had stopped, the weather that remained was arctic and crisp; the stars were trembling in the ink-black sky. Men stayed in the barracks, gathered around the stoves, lobbing chunks of wood into them, and listening for the crackling as they burned. In Lee’s, there were twenty men engaged in rounds of poker and drinking.

Lee was playing a game with Nanette. He had given her a rope with a knot at one end, and was teaching her to let it pass by without biting it. If she did it three times, he gave her a hunk of bread. He dragged the rope across his cot, and she watched it like an African explorer studying a python slithering into a river. “Get it!” he cried, and Nanette pounced, shaking the rope until it was dead. Then: treat.

It was too complicated a game for her brother, whom Lee had to put back into his kennel. But Boy tended to whimper if not paid attention to, so he, too, got a small treat when his sister did well.

Lee was making a list of questions for Harry. When would they both know not to make messes indoors? Was there a supply of squeaky balls somewhere? When would everyone be safe?

In the middle of the night, he always woke four or five times, just listening to them breathe. Was that a cough or a sneeze? Tonight, at two and at two-thirty and at three, they were sleeping, perhaps the slightest of wheezes in Nanette’s exhale. And at four, as every night, they began playing mysterious games involving pouncing on each other in the forest of shredded woolen uniforms and underdrawers he cycled into their little kennel. Bang! went the kennel as one puppy flew into the other. Nanette’s voice growled, followed by a high yelp from Boy, and then Lee needed to separate them, one under each arm, under his blanket, in a vain attempt to calm them down.

A few minutes later, they were dancing across his chest, flopping off the cot, there was a skitter of toenails on the floor, and then the launching of a small body directly into his solar plexus. He huffed upward, and then the puppies were carrying on with guttural protests like drunken friars.

He was laughing, and could not remember the last time he had laughed. Something lurched behind him, his cot bounced, and he felt something cold and smooth against his cheek.

“Duncan,” someone hissed.

“Hey!”