He waits so long before he speaks I’m afraid he never will. But then he clears his throat. “No. My parents died a year ago—” His voice catches, then re-forms. “It was a car accident. Two miles from our house.”

A sharp pain pings through my chest. I never should have asked. “I’m so sorry,” I say, but my words sound useless—itty-bitty things that slide right off the skin like oil on water. Never being absorbed.

“I hardly knew my uncle; he never wanted me to live with him,” he continues. “So he sent me here.” He scrubs a hand through his hair, then drops his hand to his side. “Even if I escape this place, I have nowhere to go.”

I almost say sorry again but catch myself. He doesn’t want to hear sorry. I hated the way it sounded when people said it to me after Grandma died, the pity dripping off their tongues. The awful, mournful look in their eyes. The sorrys didn’t change anything.

Oliver wants to hear that wrongs can be made right. That moments in our past can be undone. That I am a Walker and I can bring back the dead.

But I can’t fix anything. The past is already decided.

I close my eyes, and I feel painfully hollow. My own emptiness engulfed by his, becoming the same. We are both alone. Both on our own. I squeeze my eyes tighter and pretend everything is different. I pretend Oliver never went missing the night of the storm. I pretend I never found him inside the Wicker Woods. I pretend he belongs at Jackjaw Lake, just like me, that his parents never died and he grew up a few houses down the shore and we’ve known each other our whole lives. I pretend we used to wade out into the shallow water in summer, me in my yellow ruffle swimsuit, he with his long boyish arms tanned by the sun, and he’d try to pull me under the water, laughing until our lungs ached. Refusing to go inside even once the watermelon-tinted sun had set. I pretend he was my first kiss.

I pretend I can keep him forever, my found thing.

I reach out and touch Oliver’s hand, winding my fingers through his. And his hand flexes softly against mine—he doesn’t pull away.

Don’t let go, I think. Or we both might drift away. We both might forget what’s real. We’ll forget how slippery time can be—how ruthless and mean. If you blink, you might miss everything.

His breathing grows heavy, sleep drawing him under, and my wretched, traitorous heart burns a hole in my chest. I close my eyes and see only the moth—wings against the window, searching for a way in. I close my eyes and see Oliver lying in the trees, snow falling over him, burying him alive.