Wolgast was taken aback. He’d never gotten completely accustomed to Amy’s directness. Her lack of inhibition struck him on the one hand as quite childlike, but it was often true that the things she said and the questions she asked him possessed a bluntness that felt somehow wise.

“I don’t know. My mother did. She was very religious, very devout. My father, probably not. He was a good man, but he was an engineer. He didn’t think that way.”

For a moment, they were silent.

“She’s dead,” Amy said quietly. “I know that.”

Wolgast sat upright. Amy’s eyes were closed.

“Who’s dead, Amy?” But as soon as he asked this, he knew whom Amy meant: My mother. My mother is dead.

“I don’t remember her,” Amy said. Her voice was impassive, as if she were telling him something he must surely know already. “But I know she’s dead.”

“How do you know?”

“I could feel it.” Amy’s eyes met Wolgast’s in the dark. “I feel all of them.”

Sometimes, in the early hours just before dawn, Amy dreamed; Wolgast could hear her soft cries coming from the next room, the squeak of the springs of her cot as she moved restlessly about. Not cries exactly but murmurs, like voices working through her in sleep. Sometimes she would rise and go downstairs to the main room of the lodge, the one with the wide windows that looked out over the lake; Wolgast would watch her from the stairs. Always she would stand quietly for just a few moments in the glowing light and warmth of the woodstove, her face turned toward the windows. She was obviously still asleep, and Wolgast knew better than to wake her. Then she would turn and climb the stairs and get back into bed.

How do you feel them, Amy? he asked her. What do you feel?—I don’t know, she’d say, I don’t know. They’re sad. They’re so many. They’ve forgotten who they were. Who were they, Amy? And she said: Everyone. They’re everyone.