I looked in boxes in the basement and boxes in the garage. I didn’t want to open anything that had been sealed. I found a lot of nothing. Camping supplies. Books. A set of dishes. I figured anything important was sealed, or wasn’t even here.

So I drove out to Mill Road by myself. I couldn’t risk taking the dog, and it had sounded like he’d settled in on the bed with Bear anyway.

It was early, and I wasn’t working. Junior had hired fucking Kyle Metzger to replace me. Kyle was just a shitty version of me. All I could think was that Kyle was lazy and stupid, and Junior had said he’d knocked up his girlfriend, so I guessed he needed to work. Every time Junior called to ask me if I wanted a shift, I turned him down. If Bear was in the room when I answered and I said “Tomorrow morning?” to Junior, Bear would shake his head, and I’d decline. I didn’t even know if I had a job anymore.

I parked in Baby Jane’s empty driveway, under the shade of pines and out of view from the road, where I saw two, then three cop cars go by, lights flashing, toward the park.

But Bear had called yesterday, I thought. They should have found her yesterday. I tried to think of where Birdie might be if she’d been locked in the closet this whole time. Who might have come in to bash my mother. Bear kept telling me it was okay. That it was going to be okay. That he was on my side and he had resources. But it was a blank spot in my memory. A plain white wall. I’d fallen asleep. I could only remember being in bed.

I went around the back of Baby Jane’s house. I had come prepared, with a screwdriver, thinking I might be able to pop out the screen and slide in through the window. But the kitchen door was unlocked.

Inside, all the shades were drawn. There were sheets thrown over the couch and the chair in the living room. The bed was neatly made with the white chenille bedspread. Everything was gone from the bathroom. No suits hung in the closet.

It smelled faintly of Pine-Sol, with just the lingering hint of cigarettes. I lay down on the bed, and that’s where I caught the smell of him, of whatever it was he put in his hair, a tonic, something old-fashioned like linden water, or bergamot. He never smelled sharp, but he always smelled clean. I thought about the hollow gauntness underneath his eyes the last time I’d seen him.

“What could kill you?” I had asked him. I had resigned myself to the truth of it. He certainly had.

“Something opportunistic,” he said. “An infection. A fever. Meningitis. Pneumonia.”

We sat in the car. It might have been the last warm evening. It smelled like pine needles and smoke and lingering whiskey. Leaves were falling, one by one, bright gold, around us.