“Was he friends with Daddy, too?”

“Oh yes. I met Daddy because of Max.”

The child nods, piecing together the puzzle of her mother’s words.

“Then is Max a ghost now?”

“What?”

“Maybe I could be him for Halloween?”

Hadley stares at her daughter as if some part of her is only now finding out. All she can do is go back to making dinner⁠—or a part of her can, as there are many versions inside the one that is visible.

Maxine is left alone with faces that made her life possible.

“So, can I go outside and look for him?” she asks without realizing.

When Jeremy gets home, he hovers over the steaming pots as Hadley tells him what happened. The sting has gone, leaving only a small bump. He kisses the top of her head, then removes three water glasses from the cupboard.

After dinner, the house is quiet.

In her room, Maxine shifts things in a dollhouse, little wooden pieces once hidden in trees, now tiny versions of the girl. Her hands move deliberately as she talks for the dolls, helps them understand how it feels to feel.

Jeremy is folding laundry from the dryer, while downstairs, Hadley rinses plates and cups.

Eight years . . . she thinks . . . Eight times around the sun . . .

And now the time ahead like open fields to be crossed.

Then something moves out in the garden, Hadley inhales and grips the sink edge with both hands. Leaning forward, she strains, but sees only her reflection skating upon the glass.

She opens the back door.

Cold pours in⁠—but out she goes, stepping carefully onto night’s first page.

She walks to the place where she saw it moving from the window. Stands there herself, waiting to feel something.

Then Jeremy is in the open door.

“Everything alright?”

“I thought I saw something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know . . . like the flash of something.”

Jeremy steps out in his socks. Moves toward his wife. The ground is still wet. Hadley is about to speak when she notices on the path between them, a white glow⁠—more a gesture of something than the thing itself.

Hadley stoops to collect a feather, then presses the silken overture of flight to her cheek, as if to prove it’s there.

Slowly, she glances up to where the tree ends and night begins.

But everything that is not darkness

must be imagined

acknowledgments

The author wishes to express his gratitude and admiration for the greatest editor in publishing, Joshua Bodwell. Praise also must go to Tammy Ackerman and Milan Bozic for design excellence, Godine publisher David Allender for his support, Elizabeth Blachman for her x-ray vision as copy editor, Celia Johnson and Madeleine Van Booy for their close scrutiny as proofreaders, and to literary agent Susanna Lea, along with her team, Kerry Glencorse, Noa Rosen, and Helena Sandlying-Jacobsen.