Lew waited on the porch steps. Inside, Burger was speaking very quietly. Lew heard a lady’s name, which sounded foreign, something about going back to Texas—was his dad from Texas?—and then something about a Mexican woman and her baby and letting sleeping dogs lie. He couldn’t hear enough to make sense of it. When Burger left and he ran back in, his pop looked as if his bones had melted.

“They arrest him?” Lew thought of sitting on the chair in front of his pop but couldn’t bring himself to enter that space that had just been filled—was still somehow filled—by Bennet Burger.

“Mr. B just told me what he told me before: Sal was with them up at Sharp Top when you said you saw him.”

“No, Pop, I—”

“They reckon it was the same man, the one done that thing to Shannon.”

“It was Mr. Celli.”

“You saw another man. You confused him.”

“No, I didn’t, Pop. I saw him.”

“It was the middle of the night. You were lying in the bushes.”

“He was no farther than that stove to me.”

Reaching over, his pop took him by both wrists and pulled him closer. Trembling, he wouldn’t look Lew in the eyes. “Son, you listen to me. Sal is Annie’s father and he didn’t kill Roh, and I don’t want you saying it to no one. You hear me?”

Lew felt like his mind was being sheared out of his head, as if some tremendous force was bearing down and twisting its weight upon the whole world, breaking things out of their shells. Snatching his wrists free, he ran. As he clattered down the porch steps he heard Annie shouting. She was cycling up the driveway. The sight of her filled him with fear and he sprinted across a muddy fallow field. Throwing her bike aside, she gave chase. The thought of her catching him became the most terrifying thing he could imagine. As he got to the trees, he snatched up a rock and flung it. It hit her shoulder. He picked up another rock and entered the woods. Out of breath, he stopped to check if she was still following. Despite his sickening fear that she would, he felt almost grief-stricken that she hadn’t. Nesting jays squabbled in the branches above a sunny glade filled with asters. His brother was dead. Nothing had changed.

Hidden under the porch, Lew waited until he saw his pop leave for the fields. Almost two weeks ago a snag boat found Roh’s body caught in the branches of a tree that had collapsed into the river. Little clot, like an eagle’s nest up high in a winter tree. Lew didn’t go to the funeral. He snuck around to the grave afterward but couldn’t believe it held his brother.

When his pop was out of sight, he slipped into the house. He needed clothes. He had already taken a blanket and was sleeping in the old summer kitchen, though he could hear critters and it frightened him to be out in the dark. A couple times, his pop had caught him sneaking in. He had taken hold of Lew, begging him to stay home, once shaking him with fury, but he just bore it until his pop released him and he could run away again. During the day he wandered the woods, going to all the places his brother had been drawn to because of their light—the sinkhole, the ruins of the old mill, the cattail swamp near Miss Winters’s place. He always expected to find Roh lying there, feeding on the light. He survived on potatoes out of the root cellar. Sometimes he hated his pop for not believing him, but his pop was all he had, and he hated himself more for leaving the bedroom door open.