“There won’t be.”

“Okay.”

“Nobody’s here.”

Matty said again, softer: “Okay.”

They got out of the Caprice and trudged up the back steps and into what looked to be the kitchen. Buckled floor underfoot. General Electric oven buried in soot, and along the wall the scorched remains of cabinetry. Smell of wet ash. The gritty taste in his mouth. This house is like somebody’s memory of a house, Jack thought. But not recent. They forgot it years ago.

He looked at Matty. He stood there, shivering with his hands in his coat pockets. His breath a plume in the gray dark.

“Come on,” Jack said. “Everything’s all right.”

The living room was mostly unburned, the air cleaner. There was a fireplace. An upright piano against the far wall and under the window a sofa crusted in silt. Flowered wallpaper peeling away from plaster. The ceiling waterstained. Jack went to the door and moved the cinder block away and kicked snow from the threshold and swung the door shut. The deadlatch looked rusted and dull, and he thought it wouldn’t budge, but with some pushing the metal bolt slid into the strike plate. Scrape of steel in the groove. Good.

He looked out the window, toward the road. Dim moonlight shining down. Frozen sky and the gloom. No sound.

He went back through the kitchen and out to the car. Matty didn’t want him to go, but he said he’d be fast. From the trunk he got the duffel, pillows, blankets. The hammer and the tarp. He piled it all on the living-room carpet. Darkness growing. If they could not cover the windows overnight, they would be real cold. They would be in trouble. They would probably freeze.

Matty watched him.

“It will be okay.”

Matty nodded.

He coughed and tasted blood in his mouth. He touched his sleeve to his lip, and it came away red. Stitches were needed maybe. What to do about it? He picked up a blanket and wrapped it around Matty like a robe.

“Stay here.”

He searched the bedrooms. Empty. The carpet dank and rotting. In the bathroom he opened the cupboard under the sink and found three dry bath towels, a glass tumbler, a can of Lysol. He carried the towels to the living room and put them on top of the duffel and headed to the garage and opened the door. Nothing. Cement floor splotched with oil stains. Nothing. The cough in his throat. What to do? Every minute colder.