He hefted her into his arms. She was stiff, and he knew he couldn’t carry her down all those stairs. Halfway through the hall he stopped with her in his arms and leaned against the wall to catch his breath. When he got to the stairs, he crouched and rested her flat on the floor and moved to her head. He gripped her shoulders through the yarn and lifted her partway up so she bent a little at the waist. With the weight of her on his knees, he dragged her down, one riser at a time. Sluggish thumps on carpet. Drop her slow. Soft so Matty doesn’t hear. There. All the way to the bottom.

He looked at the sleeper sofa. It floated like a barge in the dark. Matty’s shape lay swathed in the quilts. The pillow still over his ear.

Silence.

He crouched and lifted her. He could not hold her long.

Quiet. Be quiet and quick.

He faltered to the front door and opened it and stumbled through. Every noise loud as an axe cracking. He thought he’d wake Matty, but he didn’t. When he got the door closed, his legs gave out and he dropped her. She banged down and slid from the porch into the snow.

He sat by her.

You will never see her face again. You will never see her. You will never.

He got up and looked around. Starless night. Frozen and hushed. A single flake floated down. Frigid blue, this wasteland. The stubble of desolate fields on all sides. No one around for miles.

He went to the shed and got the wheelbarrow and pushed it on its tire through the snow to her and heaved her in. Snowflakes light as lace dusted the rainbow blanket. He stood there, his breath a faint plume. The cold and the quiet. Ten heartbeats, twenty.

The moon stared down at him.

He wheeled her around the Chevrolet Caprice to a nice spot behind the barn, where the roof hung over and tall old pine trees wore coats of fresh whiteness and a patch of ground wasn’t frozen too bad. A peaceful spot. He got a shovel from the shed and started digging. He’d forgotten gloves, and he didn’t go back for them. He kicked the blade through layers of snow to the packed dirt, and he tried to dig. He got the ice axe from the shed. He dug and kept digging. Deep, so the dogs in the fields wouldn’t get at her. So she wouldn’t come up in the spring. He dug, and he didn’t think. He flicked off his mind like a light switch.

Cold burned into his skin.

On the shovel, his hands went slippery.

Lift, slash. Dig.