“Who’s her father?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where was she born?”

“At home,” I said.

“Were you there?” he asked, like he couldn’t believe it, and when I said yes, he just said, “Jesus.”

This was why I didn’t tell. That one word, like it was all too much. To have been burned alive in a fire your dad started. To have watched your mother give birth to your secret sister. It was too much.

The window was open just enough to hear the wind through the pines outside, like a cold, soft whisper. I saw Buddy rouse and lift his nose and sniff the air as it came in. The air was sharp. But the bed was warm.

“You could get out of there,” Bear said.

“I’ve thought about it.”

“But?” Bear asked.

“I can’t leave her behind,” I said.

“Your sister?”

“Yes.”

“Your mother did that to her, not you,” he said.

“She’s just a baby,” I said.

“It’s abusive to both of you,” he said. “It’s just as bad to expect you to keep the secret, to live with that, as it is for her to keep her.”

I was quiet. I didn’t disagree with him; I just didn’t know what to say. How do you leave? How do you leave behind that little pudge-legged curly-haired baby?

“What if it kills you both?” he asked.

“It didn’t, though,” I said. “What was supposed to kill me didn’t.” I chewed at my lip, thinking. “We should have all been dead,” I said. “But we’re not. I’m not, and now she’s here. I can’t just leave her.”

He sat up and turned his back to me, checked his phone, then put it facedown on the nightstand. He had million-dollar skin. Not a blemish, not a scar. No one had ever clocked him upside the head or set his house on fire while he was sleeping. I didn’t think he had so much as a split end in all that beautiful hair. His teeth were blinding white.

He looked over his shoulder. “I get it,” he said.

“You do?”

I’d been braced for rejection. For fury, or coldness, or anything other than understanding. He got under the covers and lay on top of me, his elbows on my shoulders and his arms alongside my face so I couldn’t move at all. I jumped, captive. My whole body wired and taut. When I jumped, he said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

I closed my eyes, because it was too much, the sight of him, the proximity, the weight. He kissed me. He put his thumbs at the corners of my eyes and waited for me to open them, to look at him.

“I’m going to help you,” he said, and smiled a little, the way he did, like a cat. “It just might not be pretty,” he said.

In the morning, I nudged Bear’s shoulder in the dark.

“I have to go to work,” I whispered. “It’s five-oh-five.”

“Take the car,” Bear said.