Wolgast smelled smoke one afternoon as he was working in the yard; by morning the air was thickened with an acrid haze. He climbed to the roof to look but saw only the trees and the lake, the mountains rolling away. He had no way of knowing how close the fires were. The wind could blow the smoke, he knew, for hundreds of miles.

He hadn’t been off the mountain in over two months, not since his trip down to Milton’s. They’d found a routine: Wolgast slept each day till nearly noon, worked outside till dusk; then, after dinner and a swim, the two of them stayed up half the night, reading or playing board games, like passengers on a long sea voyage. He’d found a box of games stored in one of the cabins: Monopoly, Parcheesi, checkers. For a while he let Amy win, but then found he didn’t need to; she was a shrewd player, especially at Monopoly, buying up property after property and swiftly calculating the rents they’d bring in and counting her money with glee. Boardwalk, Park Place, Marvin Gardens. What did the names of these places mean to her? One night he’d settled in to read to her—20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which they’d read before but she wanted to hear again—when she took the book from his hand and, in the flickering candlelight, started to read aloud to him. She didn’t so much as pause over the book’s difficult words, its contorted, old-fashioned syntax. When did you learn to do that? he asked her, utterly incredulous, as she paused to turn the page. Well, she explained, we read it before. I guess I just remembered.

The world off the mountain had become a memory, remoter by the day. He’d never managed to get the generator working—he’d hoped to use the shortwave—and had long since stopped trying. If what was happening was what he thought was happening, he reasoned, they were better off not knowing. What could he have done with the information? Where else could they go?

But now the woods were burning, driving a wall of choking smoke from the west. By the afternoon of the next day it was clear they had to leave; the fire was headed their way. If it jumped the river, there’d be nothing else to stop it. Wolgast loaded the Toyota and placed Amy, wrapped in a blanket, in the passenger seat. He had a soaked cloth for each of them, to hold over their mouths, their stinging eyes.

They didn’t get two miles before they saw the flames. The road was blocked with smoke, the air unbreathable, a toxic wall. A hard wind was blowing, driving the fire up the mountain toward them. They would have to turn back.