“I mean, yeah. My mama would read me and Tai bedtime stories about Viloki demons that would scare me half out of my mind. She would point outside and tell me to watch for dark shapes crawling up our drive. She lived for scary stories,” I say, remembering how her eyes gleamed when she told the most gruesome of them. “Have you heard the Viloki legend about the lonely man who married the fox? She told me that one once, and I never forgot it.” It was that night, the night of the fight with Dad and the shattered perfume.

He rubs his lips together. “Remind me.”

“He searches all the island for a wife,” I start. “One day, on a walk through the moor with his loyal hound, he comes across a wild fox being chased by dogs. He saves the fox from death, and the next night, a beautiful woman arrives on his doorstep. They soon marry.”

“Hmm.”

“For some time they live happily. Soon enough, a son is born, just as the man’s dog has a puppy.”

“The picture of domestic bliss.”

“Except that it becomes vicious, snapping at anyone and everyone. Any attempt to train it fails, and it takes a special, hostile interest in the young wife. She begs her husband to kill it, but he refuses. So one afternoon, finding her alone, the dog attacks her, biting her badly. A maid finds her and tries to scare the dog away, but she isn’t able to, and as she watches, her mistress’s damaged muscles begin to convulse, like a deer shaking off invisible fleas.” I pause. “So over the course of a minute, this young wife transforms back into a fox, with snow-white fur, four paws, a pointed nose, and nothing but a shallow flesh wound. She sheds her human form to flee. The husband begs her to return. The woman considers his pleas, because the dog has been put to death. For some time, she lives as a fox each day and returns each night as a woman to sleep beside him. But in the end, she leaves him to be a fox forever.”

We sit for several seconds in silence.

“I’ve heard that one,” he says. “It’s pretty screwed-up.”

I burst out with a laugh, spilling the beer on my hand.

“My mother liked it, too,” he adds, eyes shining at me.

“This is going to sound ridiculous,” I say, still cupping my beer glass. “But as a kid I thought my mother was that fox.”

He looks into his beer. “That’s not ridiculous. That’s how sensitive people make sense of things, by working bad things into stories they can digest.” He watches me. A hush settles over us. “I’m sorry, by the way. About what happened with her.”