“Are you tellin’ me that, son, or are you simply tryin’ to convince yourself?”

Peter let go of the blinds. The plastic slats thwacked back into place.

“It’s OK if you don’t know, Peter. It’s OK.”

But it wasn’t.

The sheriff took a sip of coffee. The sound of the clock ticking seemed to mark the time between either one of them saying anything. After a while, the grey glow in the room became stronger, bringing with it thicker snow, and eventually the sheriff sat back in his chair.

“At the beginning of a relationship, you think you’ll know everything about a person there is to know,” he said. “It’s all ahead of you to learn like a book you’ve not read yet and the other person is just itchin’ to pass theirs over to you. When I met my Judith, her favourite colour was yellow and her favourite movie was anything with Patrick Swayze. Take your pick. She got on well enough with her brother, but he’d stolen from her family once and so I always knew to keep his visits short. Christmas made her sad. Halloween brought herjoy. She wore no-frills double D sports bras and preferred her eggs over easy with toast on the burned side. But you know what? I never knew she struggled with her eating until it took her from us.”

Peter looked up. The sheriff’s candour was so surprising, he had no choice but to hold his gaze.

“What I’m tryin’ to say, son, is that it’s OK if you don’t know what that word is. We can’t know everythin’ about our loved ones. We never do.”

“But why not?”

The sheriff sighed as if to say if only everything was that easy, and Peter felt the familiar prickle of his own naivety being reflected back at him. “Sweet boy. Because people have the right to their own secrets, and the right to guard their own demons.”

“Don’t say demons.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know. But don’t say demons.”

The door to the office opened behind Peter. The sheriff glanced up, raising a finger to whoever was standing there as a sign to give him a minute, and the door quietly closed again.

“Son.”

“I know. You need to go.”

“Peter, the marshal ranger you first encountered at Yellowstone has shared the government’s concerns that Timberdark may be a code or acronym for a plan being prepared by the Returned against the wider population.”

Peter sat forward. “No.”

“No, why?”

“Just no.”

“Then tell me.”

“Because this is why the Returned made a sanctuary at Wranglestone in the first place. To escape people who assumed they’d be monsters.”

“Son, nobody’s talkin’ about anybody bein’ a monster.”

“Aren’t they?”

“No. They’re talkin’ about what any people will do to protect themselves when they’re threatened or scared.”