Mr. Perkins tips his head to me, and in front of him is a broom he had been sweeping side to side, brushing the dock clean of the snow. An odd thing to be doing in winter. But Floyd Perkins has never been ordinary.

“Docks were starting to sink,” he says, as explanation. “And my snow shovel broke.” He waves a hand at the broom, as if the solution were obvious, then squints up at the sky. “This damn snow won’t let up. It’s nearly as bad as the year your great-aunt Helena started tossing ice cubes out her window.” Mr. Perkins knows most of the Walker tales. He was here the winter Helena Walker lobbed ice cubes out the loft window each morning—a peculiar spell for conjuring snow. A spell only Helena could perform. Winter lasted eight months that year, and after that, Helena’s mother, Isolde, forbade her from summoning the snow again—placing a lock on the icebox. The thought of it still makes me smile: Helena’s wild red hair spiraling up around her as flakes seethed down from the sky.

“The forest seems angry,” I say, nodding up at the mountains, where clouds gather against the jagged slopes to the north. It isn’t Helena Walker who’s responsible for this winter’s storms; it’s something else. A darkness over the lake—a forecast of something to come. I shiver and tamp my feet in the snow to keep the circulation moving through my limbs.

“These woods have a temper,” he agrees, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Best not to anger it.”

A tree all alone may grow hatred in its bark and moth-eaten leaves, a note handwritten in the margins of the spellbook reads. But an entire forest can weave malice so deep and well-rooted that no safe passage can be made through such a place. The entry was written as if it was an afterthought, but it’s always stuck with me. The severity of it. The warning that a forest cannot be trusted. The trees conspire. They watch. They’re awake.

I turn away from the mountains and ask, “Did you see someone walk around the lake this morning?”

Mr. Perkins wipes at his forehead, then holds his hand over his eyes, as though he is looking out across an endless blue sea, in search of land. “Who you out looking for?”

I’m not sure I want to say, to explain about Oliver. About all of it. So I just say, “A boy from camp.”