Matty whispered, “We were back at our house, and we had this dog. His hair was yellow, and he would fetch things like a ball or sticks if you threw them, and he would lick your face, or you could shake his paw. He was a good dog.” He stopped and drew a breath. “Then we left our house and we never went back, and we didn’t take the dog with us. We left him there alone.”

“That sounds sad.”

“Yeah. It was.”

“We didn’t have a dog, though.”

“I know. Just in the dream we did.”

“Okay.”

Matty didn’t say anything. He lay huddled in the blankets, watching the fire. His face pale in the gaunt orange light. After a while he looked at Jack. “If we had a dog, we wouldn’t leave it, would we?”

“No. We wouldn’t leave it.”

The fire warmed. Pop of flame. A glow of light on the ceiling. Jack held Matty until he fell back asleep, and then he rose out of the blankets and tended the fire. He couldn’t rest. His throat hurt, and his swollen face. His heart. He walked into the kitchen, coughing.

Look at this place.

Any louder and the racking cough would wake Matty. He went outside. Wheezing and rasping. Then a long silence. The wind in the black stands of birch. He stood there holding his chest, and he lifted his face to the first raw light of day. Where are you? he thought. Are you here? Do you see us here, in this place?

He listened.

Nothing but the wind.

No, he thought. You’re not here. You never were.

Doyle drove from Big Grassy Ridge to the Dahl place and climbed the porch steps and knocked at the door. He waited. No sound in the house. He knocked again. “This is Sheriff Doyle. Anybody home?”

He walked into the living room. The air was downright chilly. He flicked the light switch. Nothing. His shadow on the wall. Ugly feeling in his gut. Don’t think bad, he thought. Not yet.

“Jack? Anybody here?”

He went to the kitchen and opened a cupboard and shut it. The refrigerator was dark inside. Upstairs, he looked in the bathroom. Empty drawers. Yeah, well. You did this.

He walked back into the kitchen and sat at the table. He put both arms on the Formica and leaned forward and bowed his head.

Bardem drove to the high school after the first bell rang. He turned into the parking lot and rolled down his window. Bright sun. The snowflakes drifting down in sparse frosty bits. He slowed to a stop. There were some boys eating pastries in the parking lot. Glazed doughnuts from Broulim’s Supermarket. Three of them. Young, maybe fifteen. They stood around a Buick Skylark with their doughnut sacks on the car hood. Relaxed. Laughing. Bardem got out and approached them.