But lying in bed, Edgar would reenact the events of that night, changing the smallest action to stop everything from unraveling.

If I had let fewer dogs out…

If I hadn’t fallen asleep…

If I had fed them the right way…

Sometimes he worked himself all the way back to If she hadn’t gotten sick…If I could have made a sound…If he hadn’t died…

The future, when he thought about it at all, held little threat and little promise. When the Impala returned that afternoon, and his mother emerged on steadier feet, new prescription in hand, he thought all their mistakes had finally been made. She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they’d established during the intervening months. In that way, their life would return to its original shape, like a spring stretched in bad times but contracting eventually into happiness. That the world could come permanently unsprung never occurred to him. And so, for the longest time, he was oblivious to what was happening, for where his mother was concerned, some things seemed no more possible than if she might suddenly fly through the air.

THE PACE OF WORK hadn’t slackened. The pups came first, then the food, the water, the cleaning, the meds. The rest of their time was devoted to training. While his mother was still recovering, Claude arrived in the morning, unloaded supplies, and helped with chores. Edgar walked Finch up and down the aisle so he could judge the dog’s recovery. Afterward, Claude stayed only long enough for a cup of coffee, drinking it standing up, with his jacket on; Edgar’s mother talked to Claude about what needed to be done in the kennel, as though they had come to some agreement about his helping out. Then he set his coffee down and walked to his car.

After she was back on her feet, Claude stopped appearing in the mornings. Since he wasn’t there when Edgar boarded the school bus, there was no reason to believe he’d been there at all, until one afternoon he came across a pile of white soap shavings on the porch steps. Claude came for dinner the next evening. The moment he entered, Edgar’s mother’s movements grew slower, more languid. And when the conversation turned to Epi and Finch, Edgar understood that Claude had been out to the kennel many times since Edgar had last seen him, including that day. By then, nearly a month had passed.

After dinner, Edgar went upstairs. He listened to their footsteps, their murmured talk not quite covered by the noise of the television. Her words filtered up to him lying in his bed.

“Oh, Claude. What are we going to do?”

Her question ended with a sigh.

Edgar rolled over and waited for sleep. Listening and not listening.

If she hadn’t been gone that day…

If I hadn’t been in the mow…

If I’d been able to speak…

Sometime in the night, the Impala started with a throaty rumble. In the morning, when Edgar stood beside his bed, fiery spikes radiated from the center of his chest.

IT WAS WARM NOW, at least on some nights. One evening he walked out onto the porch and straddled an old kitchen chair to watch the sun set. Days of sunshine had melted the snow in the field, and a brief rain had rinsed everything clean. Almondine found a spot on the old rug and began chewing a bone, her mouth propped open against the hollow end. Shortly, the kitchen door opened and his mother’s hands came to rest on his shoulders. They listened to the water drip from the trees.

“I like that sound,” she said, “I used to sit here and listen to water run off the roof like that before you were born.”

I know, he signed. You’re very old.

He felt rather than heard her laugh. She dug her fingers lightly into his shoulders. “This is the time of year your father found that wolf pup. Do you remember us telling you about that?”

Parts of it.

“See those aspens down there?” She reached over his shoulder, and he closed an eye and sighted along her arm at a stand of trees occupying the lower corner of the field. “When he came up from the woods that day, those were only saplings. You could wrap your fingers around the trunks of most of them. They’d just begun to leaf out. I happened to be looking there when your father came through. It was the most amazing thing-he just shimmered into place, walking so slow and cautious. At first I thought he’d hurt himself. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up to see it.”

Because you thought he was hurt? Or because of how it looked?

“Both, I suppose. I should have known he was carrying a pup right away. He was walking the same way he carried a newborn in the kennel.”

With his shoulders hunched.

“Yes. But from a distance, I didn’t recognize it.”

The sound of her voice was pleasant, and Edgar felt like listening, and he supposed she felt like talking. He’d heard bits and pieces of the story as far back as he could remember, but now she told him about the miscarriages that preceded it, the final trip to the hospital, the figures in the rain. By the time she finished, the aspens at the back of the field had dissolved into the gloaming.

Did you ever name the baby?

“No,” she said, at length.

Suppose it had lived.

His mother took a deep breath.

“I think I know what you’re getting at, Edgar. Please don’t ask me to compare different kinds of grief. What I’m trying to tell you is that after the miscarriage, I lost myself for a while. Time passed that I don’t remember much about. I can’t explain what it was like, exactly, but I remember feeling angry that I’d never had a chance to know that baby before he died, not even for one minute. And I remember thinking I’d found a place where none of it had happened, where I could just rest and sleep.”

He nodded. He recalled how, waiting in the barn beside his father that day, something had blossomed before his eyes when he closed them, something dark and forever inward-turning. He recalled how after a time he had found himself walking along a road, how the one Edgar had stayed with his father and the other had kept walking, how all around the road was pitch dark and how rain was falling on him and gently drenching him. And he remembered thinking that as long as he stayed on the road he was safe.

“Do you want to know why that hasn’t happened to me now?” she said.

Why?

“Because I did have a chance to know your father. It’s so unfair he died that I could scream, but I was lucky enough to know him for almost twenty years. That’s not enough. I could never have known him enough, not if we both lived to be a hundred. But it is something, and that makes a difference to me.” She paused again. “What happened to your father isn’t your fault, Edgar.”

I know.

“No, Edgar, you don’t know. Do you think I can’t read you? Do you think I can’t see? You think just because you don’t make a sign for something it isn’t written all over your body? In how you stand and walk? Do you know you’re hitting yourself in your sleep? Why are you doing that?”

It took a moment to sink in. When he stood, the chair clattered to the floor behind him.

What do you mean?

“Unbutton your shirt.”

He tried to walk away, but she laid a hand on his shoulder. “Do it, Edgar. Please.”

He unfastened the line of buttons and let his shirt fall open. A bruise, mottled with sickly blue and green, covered the center of his chest.

Somewhere, an icy tuning fork struck a bar of silver and rang and rang. He walked to the bathroom and stood before the mirror and pressed a fingertip into the bruise. An ache pulsed outward along his ribs.

How long had he been waking with that feeling of an anvil having been dropped on his chest? A week? A month?

“What is that?” Trudy said, when he walked into the kitchen. “Goddamn it, Edgar. What’s going on with you? You’re so closed up around your sadness you’ve left me here alone. You can’t do that. You can’t shut me out. As if you’re the only one who lost someone.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “In the mornings when you walk into the kitchen, I’ll see you out of the corner of my eye and think you’re him-”