“You can’t keep thinking that your actions have no effect on people,” he said.

I’d forgotten how out in the fake world, too, everyone tells you what to think and feel.

“She can’t wait to see you,” he said. How beautiful the sky was, even here.

“Who,” I said, hoping.

“Who else,” he said. “Your mother.”

“She’s okay?” I said. Bay had been telling the truth, and Dice had too, in the end—and though I’d trusted them, it was still a surprise to learn that the real-world truth matched the fake-world truth. I pictured her heading to her store, flipping on all her multicolored lights, settling into her chair with her chin on her hand, smiling. She was alive. “But the earrings,” I said.

“She knows it was you,” Isaac said. “It’s all right.” He reached out and patted my neck, quick and gentle and slightly fearful, the opposite of Bay’s touch.

I stopped staring at the thrilled sky. I refocused my eyes on Isaac, who looked wary. “I bet I sounded like a nutcase on the phone,” I said.

He laughed. I was delighted at the sound. I let myself hope, even, that we might try to go back to how we were before, despite his uncertainty. I didn’t yet know that something had broken in me. The candle might have been there, but the wick was gone.

* * *

Isaac wanted me to drive back but I couldn’t even get my hands to grip the wheel. Both my eyes jerked open and shut. The sun rose very, very slowly, though we were driving toward it, east. The sky was dim for hours. I watched the digital clock in the dashboard, and it ticked forward in bursts.

Queen might have escaped the hayloft. She could ask around after me and find me in my condominium in Durham with the paper-thin walls.

The family might have continued to exist. Dice could have gathered Ashers on another continent. Maybe the barn fire didn’t spread to the long house. Maybe the police didn’t arrest anyone. Or maybe the police didn’t even come. Maybe the police had said to Queen, “We’ll come with helicopters, we’ll find the leader, we’ll save the family,” and then they’d sent her on her way and laughed to themselves, because the violence, the murder, the firebombs, the fear Dice cultivated and cherished, mattered so little to them. The mountains were full of people like that. Maybe if I climbed back up those sinking mountains I’d find it all just the same, the spinning windmill, the sighing cows, the men and women singing shape notes with doors open to the frigid winter.

* * *