Dull sunrise paints the world pewter. Dee staggers down a rocky escarpment toward the sound of water. She comes to the lip of a deep defile. At the bottom, a stream runs hard and silver over the rock. By the narrow shooting water, there is a sleeping bag, open like a slack mouth. A dying fire sends up threads of smoke in the dawn-gray air.

So this is the weekend place. Now that the moment is upon her, Dee feels solemn. It seems almost holy, the end of so many things.

She picks her way down, shakily. Her arm feels heavy as stone, weighed down by venom. The rock by the stream is spattered with dark drops. Blood. Something has happened here.

She follows the drying blood into the stand of birches. That’s right, she thinks. Animals go into hiding to die. But which one, Ted or Lulu? It is familiar, the dim dappled tree light. The quiet conversation, leaf to leaf. This has happened before. Dee went into the trees and when she came out, someone was dead. This time overlays that, like a drawing on tracing paper. But of course, it was a summer afternoon, that time, by the lake. And it was pines that day, not silver birch. She drops white static over these thoughts.

She does not see it at first, the body. Then she glimpses a hiking boot, half torn off a foot, poking out from a tangle of briar. He is splayed at an angle, face down. Dark stuff leaks from his mouth. She thinks, Oh, she got away and he is dead, and joy surges through her. Then she thinks, But I wanted to kill him.

Ted groans and turns, slow as a world revolving. Dirt and leaf mold cover his flesh like a dark tattoo. The knife is still stuck in his abdomen. Blood bubbles up around it, pulses out in a glossy stream. He sees her, and his expression of surprise is almost comical. He has no idea how well she knows him, how closely she has watched, how intertwined are their fates. “Help me,” he says. “You’re hurt too.” He is looking at her arm.

“Rattler,” Dee says, absently. She stares at him in fascination. She knows how the snake feels, now, approaching the mouse.

“My bag, by the stream, surgical glue. There’s a snakebite kit too. Don’t know if it works.” She finds it wonderful that at this moment he’s concerned for her well-being. Of course, he thinks she’s going to help—he needs her.

“I’m going to watch you die,” she says. She watches as disbelief spreads over his face.

“Why?” he whispers. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.