I showed the boots to Isaac and he laughed. “Hideous,” he said. “You don’t want those.” He hadn’t yet met her. But Isaac was good at freeing me to feel new disdain or new love; that was why I liked him so much. “Let’s give them to someone who actually needs them.” He drove me to Ninth Street and we deposited the boots next to a sleeping man with a cardboard sign, even though they would not fit him. It hurt me to give them away, to look back and see them standing on the curb, pertly upright.

When my mother asked me why I never wore the boots I said, “I donated them.” I hadn’t known how important they were to her. But she didn’t talk to me for a week after that, and I learned it was better to lie.

I looked out over the Smokies, soft layers of taupe and gray. “Here you go,” Bay said. He was just like Isaac, but better. After all that fuss, Bay’d just wanted to dress me himself. Nothing had ever hurt so badly as pushing my swollen, frozen, hot hand through a coat sleeve. I didn’t let it show. I thought he might turn the car around. I was all his. He zipped me up, pulled the cords. “It’s warmer when someone does it for you,” he said gently.

I closed my eyes in the rush of heat.

He caught my throbbing hand and lifted it to his eyes. He looked at it just like he’d looked at my father’s photograph, tilting it. My left palm was too swollen for me to make a fist, and in the middle of the red, the splinter was rimmed in rigid lemon-white.

“Hey,” he said. “You’ll get a scar, and you’ll always remember this time. Hey, Beryl,” he said, more softly. “I know these things. It’ll be okay.”

I floated, pinned to the earth only by my hand.

* * *

That evening, he parked in a Pisgah National Forest lot. He brought a folded tent from his trunk, and I saw that the trunk was full of gleaming empty bags of gas station chocolate, the same kind he’d offered me.

“Over in Asher land, we eat our own animals,” he said, “but we’re mostly a dairy farm. The worker reaps the best rewards. In the fake world, we only eat vegetables, except roadkill. Bet I can find us a raccoon or opossum for tonight.” We started to hike up a narrow pine-needle-floored trail into the plum-colored twilight. He carried the backpack and I carried the tent and water, taking care not to use my left hand.