Bay stood up and looked at me, just looked. I knew some terrible punishment was on the way. He would tell Dice. My apology, my regret, my horror wouldn’t matter to Dice. What mattered to Dice? The family, whatever form it took; it was mutable, an energy, an idea, a wind. I’d told Lindsay. I had started this. I didn’t know how I could save myself.

“I know you think you’ll get some mercy because you touched my neck so nicely,” he said, “but it doesn’t work that way.”

I fell onto my knees into the dirt. My body must have known from fairy tales that this is what you do in front of kings and executioners, you go on your knees in front of them, and beg. I looked up at Bay, who regarded me with the gentle curiosity of a birdwatcher. I could try running away. Maybe, like Queen, I would escape. Or maybe, like Cassie, I wouldn’t manage to. If there was no such thing as the definite self, it would make no difference anyway.

“Don’t tell Dice,” I said. I kissed the tops of Bay’s black boots.

He said, “He already knows. Let’s go to him and see what he wants to do with you. You know what I’m saying, sister?”

I tilted my head up at him. I could feel all the gathered tears falling down my cheeks at once.

CHAPTER 24

I felt light like a kindling twig as Bay and I walked through the many rooms of bunk beds, to Dice’s door. Bay carried the camera with him.

“Knock,” Bay said. I knocked.

“It’s Harmony,” I said. “And Bay.”

Silence. I examined the door, roughly painted white, with dirt deep in its grain as though it’d been forced in by an explosion. I could hear the sleepers’ breathing from the bunk beds and felt so far from the family as I’d first seen it, the family that ate upside-down cake, the family that shouted love, love, love. I wondered if I should knock again. Next to me, Bay shifted his weight like a horse, patient. Then Dice swung the door open.

His eyes looked bloodshot. “Let’s go out,” he said. The room had that pine-soap smell that I found intoxicating. Josiah bent over the bed, where the two injured lay, mummified in bandages—therefore, they were still alive.

Dice led us out his side door and into the barn. A few sheep stood and wandered over to watch us but I was only thinking about the room somewhere nearby where the family buried their departed.

“Out with it,” Dice said.

I glanced at Bay. Bay smiled at me. Even when his lips parted he did not reveal his teeth.