Shelby took Avery’s hand. “C’mon Avery, let’s go get an ice cream at Turner’s while your dad gets some exercise.”

Deedee kept typing. “Gordon. Milwaukee, right?”

Michael didn’t answer. He shot out the back door, ran into his unit, changed into his running clothes, and hit the road toward the abandoned air force station in Truro. He remembered when Ed and Connie brought him here with the girls. Ed blindfolded them in the car, and when they got there he led them to the front of an empty barracks and took the handkerchiefs off their eyes. It was the strangest place, so wrong for the Cape, ugly and empty like a ghost town, especially this time of year, with chunks of snow littering the parking lot. Connie had said, “Walk around. Try to come up with a story. What happened here?”

What happened here?

He bent over to catch his breath. When he stood up, he wiped the sweat off his eyes with his sweatshirt and noticed that the place was still as big and as lonely as it had been back then—even lonelier, because it wasn’t summer, although summer always filled him with painful nostalgia.

Calmer now, he turned around and ran back to Provincetown on Route 6 instead of the back roads. There was hardly any traffic, just a few trucks rumbling by. That was how Michael liked it.

When he got back to the house, he knew something was wrong, because Deedee turned off the water and Shelby, who’d been cutting carrots, put her knife down. They didn’t usually stop anything for him. He liked being part of the flow of the house, part of the rhythm.

Avery was at the table doing homework. Deedee said, “Can you do me a favor, Aves? Can you run to the store and get me some milk?”

“I’m doing math.”

“Now.” Deedee handed her a five-dollar bill and everyone fell silent.

Avery rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She sounded just like an adult, and why shouldn’t she? She was constantly surrounded by grown-ups.

As soon as she was gone, Shelby walked up to him and put her hands on his shoulders. He shrugged them off. He knew what was coming. He remembered when the Gordons’ old dog Fender had died, shortly after he’d moved in with them. Poppy sat on the stairs crying. He sat next to her and watched as she pulled at her fingers, which was what she did when she was upset. “It hurts too much,” she’d said.

Shelby said, “So about Ed and Connie.”

He hadn’t heard their names out loud in so long. They sounded strange coming from Shelby, who didn’t even know them. “I don’t want to—”

“Baby,” Deedee said, “they passed away.”