“I got in a fight. It’s over now.”

“Who did you fight?”

“Just a guy. It doesn’t matter.”

“Why did he fight you?”

Jack coughed softly. He looked at the fire. It was dying, and its light didn’t reach far.

“Did you make him mad about something?”

“We just fought. That’s all.”

“Does he know where you are?”

“No. He doesn’t know where we are. Don’t worry.”

“I don’t want him to come here.”

“He won’t.”

“I don’t want him to hurt you.”

Jack didn’t answer. Outside the door, he could hear the wind starting. Thin branches of the hawthorn scraping brick. A distant rustling. Trees. He tucked the blanket under Matty’s feet. “Nobody’s going to hurt me.”

“Why?”

“I won’t let them.”

Matty was silent.

“Do you believe me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I won’t let anyone hurt you either.”

“Okay. I have a question.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to school tomorrow. Am I?”

“No.”

“Did you lock the door?”

“Yes. I locked it.”

Matty lay there, looking at him. Studying him. Then he closed his eyes and kept them closed.

“Mom isn’t on a trip,” he said. “Is she?”

Jack swallowed. A spider crawled across the ceiling.

“No. She isn’t on a trip.”

In dreams he held the shovel and he dug. The cold handle biting his hands. The dark and the snow. When he got close to her, he dropped the shovel and fell to his knees. With his hands he pushed the snow and wet dirt away and uncovered her damp cheek. Plastic white of her skin, and her lips caked in black. Her yellow hair. Bit of rainbow blanket. When he woke he couldn’t keep from getting up. The cough in his throat. The ash. He put wood on the fire, and then he just stood there watching Matty sleep. The fire crackling. He listened to the wind and he listened to the crackle and he listened to the thud of his heart.

“You should sleep,” he told her.

“The house creaks,” she said. “It keeps me awake.”

“It’s late.”

She didn’t answer.

“Come on. I’ll take you upstairs.”

“No.”

She sat there on the kitchen counter in her nightgown, smoking a slender length of weed rolled in rice paper. Her knees drawn up over the kitchen sink and her hand across her skinny legs. Holding the joint with a wispy grace. Frail tendrils of smoke rising from the tip. She didn’t turn toward him but kept looking out the open window into the dark. “I don’t like this house.”

“It’s our home.”

“Our home?”

“Yes.”

She shut her eyes. “This is not a home.”

“We can make it a home.”

“No. We can’t.”

“We can make it good again.”