Sunny pushed open the door to the dining room. The lights were on there, too, and Bay and Sara were back. They were wearing unfamiliar black clothes. The room smelled like burning grease. I scrambled to understand what I was seeing. Josiah was carrying two sloshing buckets of water, and two people were laid out on the table, blocked from our view. Dice and Sara dipped rags in the water and squeezed them out on the people on the table. “Hog and lard,” Josiah was saying. “Honey. Bandages.”

“Here,” Dice said. He handed Josiah a shopping bag. The bag looked silky, opalescent—then I realized it was plastic.

Josiah pulled out rolls of gauze. “Store bought?” he said.

“All praise to that boy’s money,” Dice said. “Without it, we couldn’t have returned.”

Which boy? I thought. Isaac? Then Josiah stepped aside. Sunny gripped my arm. The people on the table were naked and blotched bark red with blood or burns. One of them—I could tell from her hair it was Osha—had a shining, blistered scab down the side of her face, down her neck, down her shoulder.

In shock, I stepped forward, and Bay noticed me. He pushed me backward out of the doorway, shut the door, and locked it. I stood in the dark entry room with Sunny. We listened to the sounds from the dining room. The drip of water. The murmur of voices, shuffling footsteps. Someone was sobbing quietly. I wondered if it was Osha making that sound, or someone who saw her.

I turned to Sunny, bumping into his chin. I hadn’t realized that he’d put his nose in my hair. He stepped back uncertainly.

“What do you think it’s from?” I said.

“Town,” he said.

* * *

I lay in my bunk. The light was off again. I guessed it was two or three in the morning. Through the window, I saw Bay collapse into one of the porch’s rocking chairs. He rocked and the porch groaned. Above him the small clouds around the moon had a rainbow tinge. I got up out of bed, my nightgown falling down to my ankles. I stepped on the sides of my feet out to the kitchen, poked at the coals, boiled water in an enamel cup with chamomile. I crept out onto the porch. “Bay!” I said. He didn’t turn. I went up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. He looked at me with eyes as bright as tracers.

“Not now, Harmony,” he said. He pushed my shoulder, like you’d push on a sheep to get it through the right gate. I stumbled sideways, barely holding the cup steady. He didn’t seem too angry to continue, and anyway I liked being a little breathless; the fear helped me focus.