Jonathan had called twice and let the second one go all the way to voice mail. Her greeting had never been personalized from the phone company’s default message. Voice mail wasn’t a thing for her crowd.

He had to get off the road. He flinched for the brake at the first turn-in but couldn’t bring himself to drive into the McDonald’s parking lot where he’d met Roy so many times before.

Three blocks down had an office park with no such connotations for him. He parked and texted her. You need to pick up the phone.

He dialed. She didn’t. What are you doing? I am not kidding. Pick up. Now.

He felt his lips grinding into a snarl as the ringtone pulsed in his ear. The call rang back through to the generic voice mail. You will be very sorry if I have to call back after this. Pick up. Right now.

Carly answered then, but didn’t say anything.

“Carly, what are you doing? What is going on?”

The breeze, wherever she was with the painting, was all the answer he got.

“Goddammit, answer me. Where are you? What are you doing?”

The wind sound was eclipsed by Carly’s shuddery breathing. Her voice, when it finally came, was just above a whisper. “Why is this a big deal?”

There is a line of what is just too much. Jonathan had felt it waiting out there all his life. There was a seam in the universe that held what you could handle right up next to the vast expanse of all that you could not. It was the line that separated getting by from the thing that would change you into something that no one else would recognize.

He imagined that every person could sense when that line was close—for themselves and also for the people they were about to shove over the boundary.

“Carly, you’re on your way back home. You need to just say that you are and then turn around and make it true. I’m also on my way back. And you’d better beat me there. Do not stop anywhere. Do you understand me?”

He heard a fumbling rustle and then nothing. “Carly?”

She was gone.

•  •  •

“Hi!” Jonathan was bright and pleasant, but careful not to be too much of either when Ada’s mother answered the door.

“Hi!” She tried to match his tone over the obvious question in her eyes of what he was doing there.

His racing heart sank. “I was just swinging by to get Carly.”

“Oh? I’m confused. She’s not here. Did she say that she was coming over? Ada’s out with her dad this morning.”