He says some other things and Dee replies, she couldn’t say what. She can’t hear through the buzzing in her head. She knows that look, of a secret nearly revealed. Ted has it in his eyes.

When he runs up the trail after the diggers, she catches her breath. He’s running toward something, she’s sure of it. Something hidden in the forest. Dee knows she can’t follow Ted. He’d see and then it would all be over. She must desperately hope that whatever is hidden cannot be accessed in daylight.

She goes indoors and sits at her post, biting her lower lip to shreds. Maybe she was wrong not to follow. Maybe she missed her chance and he’s moving Lulu right now, taking her into the wild … Dee watches the forest with burning eyes.

Half an hour later, Ted comes back into view on the shadowed trail. Dee’s heart burns and leaps. There is distress in his every movement. He shakes his head from side to side as if in passionate argument with himself. Whatever needs doing is still yet to be done. She hasn’t missed it. There will be action, tonight.

Dee puts on hiking boots and lays out sweaters and a dark jacket, puts water and nuts in her pocket. Then she sits like a stone and watches Ted’s house. Clouds pass and the sun sinks lower over the treeline. Dusk covers everything.

When she hears the distinctive triple thunk of the locks, the creak of the back door, she is ready. She feels, rather than sees him leave the house in the black. As he passes under the streetlight she sees the backpack. It is full of something that bulges in odd angles and curves. Tools, a pick, a shovel? He moves along the road into shadow. Now there are no more lights, just soft night and the moon overhead, shining like half a dime.

She follows at a distance; his flashlight guides her like a star. When he stops at the entrance to the woods and looks around, she stops too, sheltering behind a tree trunk. He waits for a long time, but she lets the night speak, lets it tell him that he is alone. When he goes on into the forest, she follows.