“Quite easily. That Darlene woman was bad news. It’s only a blessing we didn’t know about the Returned back then while the pair of them were still around. I dread to think of losing our friends like you did. It was no good what that ranger did to young Wyatt and Daisy.”

“You knew them?”

“Yes, I knew them. We were friends.”

Marge turned her back so Peter couldn’t see her face. And it came as such a surprise to hear her call anyone a friend that when her chest started to heave, Peter wasn’t entirely sure what to do about it.

“I didn’t know you knew them,” he offered. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Why do you always have to say something?”

“I don’t know. It’s just the way I am.”

“Well, there you go, then.”

Peter made his way back towards the entrance, positioning himself some distance from Marge so she didn’t have to feel he was watching her, and looked out on to the street.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said quietly.

“Tsk. Don’t be giving me that bull. It’s not my loss. And it’s not yours neither, no matter how badly you feel about what you saw when you went poking about up there. It’s theirs.”

“I know, I was just trying to—”

“Well, don’t. They were trying for a baby, last time I saw them. Asked if I’d be its godmother, too, like I’d have the first clue what to do with some bawling baby. It’s only a blessing that poor wretch never made it into the world.”

“Yes,” said Peter under his breath. But he could feel that terrible silence hanging over the cot in the cabin even now. It wasn’t the silence of an empty room, but the deafening kind that came from there being a hole in the world where something good used to be. Peter clenched his fist. He didn’t have the heart to tell Marge that she had been a godmother.

A wind caught one of the cars outside, shaving a surface layer of snow off the hood. Peter watched it skitter and snake out across the road, aware that without even trying to, he’d stepped through a door into a more private room in the conversation.

“Jim reckons the government had their reasons for killing them both,” Marge went on.

Peter shrugged. “They sent a marshal ranger out to all the parks to question any Returnees who’ve chosen to stay away, apparently. They’re worried about something called Timberdark.”

“That name means nothing to me.”

“They think it’s something the Returnees are mixed up in. Some code word for a plot against everyone else or something.”

Marge caught Peter’s reflection in the glass. “And what do you think?”