The first frost would come soon. He could hardly bear the thought of another winter, which he and his dad would wait out like a siege, having to bring the young animals in, the path to the outhouse solid ice, chilblains itching and burning on their hands and feet, his dad eating less so there would be enough for him, getting worryingly thin, and the silence between them becoming sharper, as pain does, in the cold. Every now and then his dad would volunteer a story, though never anything personal. The last was about how he had once cut off a rattlesnake’s head with a spade, and when he lifted the head up onto the blade, it kept hissing, trying to strike, the headless body still rattling somewhere in the grass. He could see that his dad felt and regretted the silence, as if conversation were another thing, despite his best efforts, he could not find a way to provide. Instead, most nights his dad would ask him to read from the Bible, claiming the type was too small for his bad eyes.

His mom was a scattering of mirrors behind the smokehouse, his brother’s bed lay untouched since that terrible night, and his dad had no past. Lewis was beginning to understand that their life wasn’t normal. He couldn’t imagine how he would have gone on without Annie. Or Raj: It was as if he had always known Raj; over these last two and a half years he had begun to feel closer in some ways to him even than to Annie.