Soon, something in the distance caught my eye, and as it came closer I saw that it was Billy and a ghost child. Maybe the one who’d been making faces at Lee through the window, I thought, though they were too far away to know. Billy held the ghost’s hand as they made their way to the others. When the five of them were together, the adults sat on the grass and Lee and the ghost child did the same. I saw that they were talking. Liz slipped her arm around Lee’s waist and I felt my stomach tighten. Lee was mine. Terry rested his broad palm on Lee’s head, let it slip to his shoulder, where it rested for a few moments. I saw Lee nod. And then the ghost child scooted onto Lee’s lap. Lee held him the way he would have held a little brother, the way he held the little ones sometimes, for a book or a song.

I was entranced by it, confused by it. I was fixed to the window, hidden in the dark. And then Lee screamed.

Out of the cabin I flew, across the path to the field in my thin nightclothes and my bare feet.

“Lee!” I called, and Liz turned to me in alarm. I could hear Lee, crying now, but Billy had him in his arms and I couldn’t see Lee’s face, couldn’t see what had hurt him. The ghost was nowhere in sight—I must have scared him off—and I knew Lee would have wanted me with him, to comfort him. It was Lee and me, more than anyone else. I was who he trusted. I was who he loved. But something about all of them together made me slow my pace. I stopped short, on the periphery.

“What happened?” I asked. “Does he need help?”

Terry turned as though he were surprised to see me, as though he hadn’t heard my yell. His face was all urgency and worry and impatience. No gentleness in it. He held a palm out to stop me from getting any closer. “We’ve got this,” he said. “We don’t need you right now.”

I froze in shame. Took a step back.

Billy and Liz and Terry. Suddenly strangers. Who were these people who pretended to love me?

“I need to know that Lee is okay,” I said, my voice loud and trembling.

“He’s fine,” Terry said. “He’ll be fine. Go back in now. I told you—we’ve got this.”

So away I went, not back to Billy’s cabin, but back to my own, and closed the door against all of them. Outside in the dark, Lee was still crying. I pressed my pillow over my ears. My bed was cold as winter.

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