I didn’t believe in Alaska’s scientifically appealing immortality. On the contrary, I was afraid he had gone off somewhere to die. It wasn’t Alaska’s way to withdraw, but until now it hadn’t been his way to die either. With every fallen tree I approached, every pile of leaves I saw, I worried Alaska might have decided it was a good place to die.

Early in the morning, as soon as we’d noticed that Alaska had disappeared, I’d called Palm because I was afraid he might have gone hunting and confused Alaska with a deer.

“I would never do that, Luisa,” Palm had said. “Do you want me to help look for him?”

In the twelve years since Martin’s death, Palm had not touched a drop of alcohol. With Selma’s help, he had thrown out all the schnapps bottles, empty as well as full, from under his sink, under his bed, in his bedroom and bathroom closets. Selma and he had gone to the glass recycling drop-off five times.

Palm had also become religious. Bible quotes were plastered throughout his house, most of them about light. i am the light of the world hung over Palm’s refrigerator. i have come into the world as light hung over the sideboard. i am the light that is over all things hung on the dark wardrobe in his bedroom.

Elsbeth could not understand it. “What’s the point of becoming religious at the very moment God has shown His very worst side?” she kept asking. Selma told her it made more sense than wanting to blow the leaves off trees in April and, after all, Palm had always known a thing or two about illumination.

In the period following Martin’s death, I was afraid of Palm, but it was a different kind of fear than before. After Martin’s death, I was afraid of Palm’s pain. I didn’t know how to approach him, in the same way you don’t know how or if you should approach a motionless animal you’ve never seen before. Pain had uprooted everything inside him it couldn’t use, and with Palm this meant just about everything. Even his rage had drained away, and without rage he seemed even more ominous to me than he had been with it.

The look in Palm’s eyes was no longer wild, nor was his hair. Every morning he combed his hair and smoothed it down, and soon after, as with Martin, a strand always stood up. If anyone mentioned it, Palm would say, “It’s pointing at the Lord.”