“Stay low,” she says as she abandons her granddaughter near the front tire. “Breathe as little as possible.”

“No breathing,” Mel manages.

Rose wraps her fingers around the door handle and tries to thumb down the button. It doesn’t move. Old trucks are as stiff and hard to manage as old women. Rose backs up one thumb with her other fist.

“It’s locked,” she says. “I’m going to try the other door. Don’t let me step on you.”

There is no hint of dawn or dusk, no spark of sunlight through a chink in walls or roof. Shuffling so she will not accidentally stomp on Mel, or trip and fall, Rose makes her way around the hood of the truck, her hand on the smooth metal for guidance. The garage is so small, there is barely room for her to squeeze between the front bumper and the back wall. Moving in the darkness—stygian, she thinks, absolutely stygian darkness—is peculiar. If she didn’t hurt in so many places, Rose would feel disembodied.

For a moment there is only the rumbling of the engine, as oppressive as darkness. “Talk to me, Mel. I need to hear your voice,” Rose says as she half floats around the bumper.

“What about?” Mel is hard to hear.

“Anything,” Rose says. Fear that Melanie will fall asleep and never waken is making her insides cold.

“Why don’t you ever want to talk about how Granddad died? Because it was so awful?” Mel asks after a moment.

No light, little hope, and this is what Mel wants to know. Rose didn’t realize she made such a mystery of it.

“No,” she admits. “It’s stupid, really.”

“I like stupid,” comes Mel’s reply.

“Okay.” Rose feels the headlight against her middle. “Your dad might know some of this.”

“You tell me.”

“You knew it was your granddad’s eightieth birthday?” Rose thinks she hears an assent, but she’s not sure. She goes on. “Well, for his big day he and some of his old hiking buddies—and I mean old; Phil is older than Harley, and Alex has to be at least late seventies—decided to do a trail in Glacier National Park.”

“Gigi! Granddad was eighty! Why didn’t you stop him?”

Mel’s voice is strengthened by outrage. Hope flutters in Rose’s chest.

“It’s a park. These guys have been hiking together for half a century. They all have cell phones and Apple Watches. One call and they’d have rangers running from every direction with the latest carry-out gear. Phil and Alex are—or were before they retired—doctors. Mostly, though, Harley and I didn’t cotton to making the other guy curtail his activities because it scared us.”

“I bet you pushed that. It doesn’t sound like Granddad,” Mel says.