“Not always. But it’s good to tell the truth.”

“Have you always told me the truth?”

In the smoldering glow, Mom’s rocker made a shape on the wall. Jack shook his head. “No. I’m sorry.”

“From now on, I want you to always tell me the truth. Will you?”

Creak of the house. Orange light.

“I will,” Jack said. “I will always tell you the truth.”

“Okay.”

Matty lay down close to Jack and huddled into him and put his cheek on Jack’s shoulder. His eyes drooped. He said, “I’m not tired.”

He fell asleep.

The candles burned low and dimmed.

In the dark of the slow cold night, Jack dreamed of her as she’d once been. Standing in the front yard on green spring grass with roses flowering around her. Her cheeks pink and her hair clipped up in silver barrettes. Shears in her gloved hands for pruning. He stood on the porch, and she turned and smiled at him. A yellow summer dress. Her favorite color.

When he woke, he reached out in the dark for Matty and felt him there. Steady heartbeat. Jack lay in the quilts. Water leaked from his eyes, and he didn’t make a sound. There was no song and there were no voices and no choirs of heaven singing. No grand amens or dawn of grace, and no one watching. No help to be had, and it was all a lie.

VIII

The second time I saw Jack, there were bandages on his hands. I don’t remember noticing bandages the first time I saw him, but I remember them the second time. White tape and gauze. Blood dried in cracks. He wore a gray thermal. His hair was damp. I think about these things, but mostly I think about the look in his eyes. I don’t know what to say about that look except that even now I can see it. No matter where I am. I can feel the look all over my skin. He was a boy alone in a house in the winter, and he had not been young for a very long time.

That is the look I remember.

When it was light enough to see, Jack rose and pulled on boots and gloves. He already wore his coat. He went outside to the woodpile, trudging through white up to his knees, and pried the axe from a stump and shook it to get off the snow. Winter stinging his lungs. He started coughing and had a hard time stopping. He should have worn a hat. He picked a dry log from the stack and stood it up and swung the axe so the blade sank deep. The wood splintered, and the blisters on his hands pulsed. He swung and chopped again and split a pile and carried the stove lengths inside and got a fire going, his head swimming. Matty still slept in the blankets.