So there it was, Wolgast thought. There it was at last. There was a term he knew and thought of now; he had heard it used only in the context of aviation, to explain how, on an otherwise clear day, a plane could fall so quickly from the sky. OBE. Overcome by events. That was what was happening now. The world—the human race—had been overcome by events.

Take care of Amy, Lacey had said. Amy is yours. He thought of Doyle, placing the keys to the Lexus in his hand, Lacey’s kiss on his cheek; Doyle running after them, waving them on, yelling, “Go, go;” Lacey leaping from the car, to call the stars—for that’s how Wolgast thought of them, as human stars, burning with a lethal brightness—down upon her.

The time for sleeping, for rest, was over. Wolgast would stay awake all night, watching the door with Carl’s .38 in one hand and the Springfield in the other. It was a cool night, the temperature down in the fifties, and Wolgast had set the woodstove going when they’d returned from the store. He took the paper now and folded it into quarters, into eighths, and finally sixteenths, and opened the door to the woodstove. Then he placed the paper in the fire, watching with amazement at how quickly it disappeared.

Chapter Seventeen

SEVENTEEN

Summer ended, and fall came, and the world left them alone.

The first snows fell in the last week of October. Wolgast was chopping wood in the yard when he saw, from the corner of his eye, the first flakes falling, fat feathers light as dust. He’d stripped to his shirtsleeves to work, and when he paused to lift his face and felt the cold on his damp skin, he realized what was happening, that winter had arrived.

He sunk his axe into a log and returned to the house and called up the stairs. “Amy!”

She appeared on the top step. Her skin saw so little sunlight that it was a rich, porcelain white.

“Have you ever seen snow?”

“I don’t know. I think so?”

“Well, it’s snowing now.” He laughed, and heard the pleasure in his voice. “You don’t want to miss it. Come on.”

By the time he got her dressed—in her coat and boots but also the glasses and cap, and a thick layer of sunscreen over every exposed inch of her skin—the snow had begun to fall in earnest. She stepped out into the whirling whiteness, her movements solemn, like an explorer setting foot on some new planet.

“What do you think?”

She tipped her face and stuck out her tongue, an instinctive gesture, to catch and taste the snow.

“I like it,” she declared.