“What are you doing?” The tone in Daddy’s voice was fear, although I could not have named it so, at the time. All I knew then was that it made me feel disgusted with him.

“Go back to sleep.” To me she said, “Teddy. Now, please.”

Outside the car the air felt solid, like wet cotton on my cheek. I felt small in the rolling dark. But another part of me thought it was exciting, to be in the forest at night with Mommy. She never did things the way other people did them. She took my hand and led me away from the car, from the light, into the trees. Her pale dress looked like it was suspended in the dark. She was like a sea creature floating across the ocean floor.

In the forest, even familiar things were strange. The constant wet patter of the night became the chilly drip of a dungeon. The creak of tree branches was the shifting of giant, scaly limbs. The snagging pull of a twig was bony fingers grasping at my sleeve—the fingers, maybe, of something that had once been a child, who wandered into the green light and never returned. I began to be scared. I squeezed Mommy’s hand. She squeezed back.

“I am going to show you something important, Teddy.” She sounded normal, as if she were telling me what was in my sandwich that day, and I felt better. As my eyes adjusted, everything seemed to glow in the half-dark, as if the air itself held light.

We stopped beneath a towering fir tree. “This will do,” she said. In the distance, through the crackling branches, I could still see the faint beam of our headlamps.

“I bought you that cat today,” Mommy said. I nodded. “Do you love it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How much?”

“I love it more than I love … ice cream,” I said. I couldn’t think how to explain my feelings for the little wooden cat.

“Do you love it more than you want Daddy to get a job?” she asked. “Tell the truth.”

I thought about it. “Yes,” I whispered. “I do.”

“You know the little girl I look after at the hospital, who has cancer? Do you love the cat more than you want her to get better?”

“No,” I said. Surely I couldn’t. That would make me a mean, mean boy.

She put a cool hand on my shoulder. “Tell me the truth,” she said.

My throat felt like it was full of knives. I gave a single nod. “I love the kitty more,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “You are an honest child. Now take it out of your pocket. Put it on the ground right there.”

I laid her gently on a patch of moss at the foot of the tree. I could hardly bear to let go of her, even for a moment.