The other option was to go to the public library. Few people came back from a visit to the library.

There was one girl a few years ago that survived the Summer Reading Program at the Night Vale Public Library. The girl, Tamika Flynn, defeated the librarian that had imprisoned her and her classmates, using the switchblade hidden in every hardback edition of Eudora Welty’s touching homecoming novel The Optimist’s Daughter.

But few who have seen a librarian up close have survived or been in a physical condition to communicate.

Perhaps Diane could use Troy. Police officers have access to all kinds of databases. If Diane could just have a few minutes searching Troy’s office computers, she could probably find something about Evan. Just something to point her in a new direction: real estate records, a birth or wedding announcement, any number of the mandatory dream journals that he would have had to file with the city if he were a legal resident and, if he didn’t, some kind of prison record.

To do that she needed to be away from Josh more than she had been in his entire life, and in order to do that, she needed to keep up the imaginary thing with Dawn.

“Yes, with Dawn.”

“Why don’t you have Don over for dinner?”

Diane did not reply. Josh opened his door, his wings flapping in an effortless blur.

“Mom, there was no Ty. DeVon helped me figure out that my dad’s real name is Troy Walsh. We couldn’t find a photo, but DeVon’s seeing if his friend can get one. I want to meet my dad. So now I’ve told you the truth. I’ve opened up like you keep asking me to do. Now you. Now your turn. You’ve been going out on dates. Sometimes these dates go all night, and, okay, so that’s a thing, I guess, and I don’t need those specifics. But I’ve never had a dad, and you won’t let me meet him, and now you’re dating someone seriously and you won’t let me meet him either.”

“Dawn’s a she,” Diane corrected automatically, based on a reality that was irrelevant to her lie, and regretted it immediately.

“So you just really don’t want me to have a dad, do you?” he said, also automatically, based on a hurt that was not irrelevant to his life, and then immediately: “No, I’m sorry. No, that’s fine. I didn’t mean . . . That’s fine.”

He was flustered, back on the defensive and unsure of how he had gotten there.

Diane did nothing. She breathed, unintentionally. The faceless old woman who secretly lives in their home crawled by on the ceiling, but neither of them noticed.

Josh matched Diane’s stare for a second, then slithered backwards and shut the door.