“Huck—”

“Leave,” he instructed. And after a moment of hesitation, Harris rolled his shoulders back, waved goodbye to Gordon, and disappeared into the well-lit hallway; his shoes hit the tiled floor with deliberate thuds as he traveled back the way he came, carrying himself away from them.

“Was he right?” Gordon asked after Huck shut the door and the condo settled back into shadow.

“He wasn’t right about anything,” Huck said as he turned with a methodical slowness and walked toward his son. He held out the paper and gave it a little shake. “You mean, will I let Harris intervene? Will I take that killer’s life like he took everything from me?”

Gordon cringed.

Huck lowered his eyes.

“No,” he answered to the floor. “What’s the point?”

“Revenge,” Gordon seethed. He hit his fist against the floor.

“Revenge will eat you alive,” Huck said and crouched to the ground and put his hands on Gordy’s head. “That’s the thing you’ll learn when you become a man, my son, about the things that could kill you, devour your humanity...the part of you that still wants goodness and justice.”

“I’m already a man, Dad.” Gordy pulled his head back from under his father’s touch. “I’ll be a senior in college. How is that not enough of a man for you?”

“I won’t let this consume our family,” Huck said without answering his son.

“You should go to her.” Gordy looked up at the ceiling and Huck nodded once. Then Gordy sighed a sleepy sigh and rested back against the couch. He placed a hand on his sister’s back and felt her tiny body rise and fall. “This one...she’ll never understand...not really. It will be like a dream. The sister she never knew, the long days at the courthouse, our loss. She’ll grow up and never know...”

“She’ll know,” Huck corrected as he rose from the floor and walked toward the door. “She’ll feel it in her bones.”

The roof of the building of luxury condominiums was a communal gathering place. Outdoor lights glimmered around the perimeter and a small fire pit had burned down to coals. It was spring, too cold for parties, and Josephine shivered, curled up in a wooden chair, her wine glass dipping precariously toward the cement.

Huck watched her from the stairwell before making his entrance. Clearing his throat, he jogged her attention and she shifted, pulling her glass upright, the red liquid sloshing against the sides.

“Harris came by,” Huck announced, and he pulled up a chair beside his wife.

“It’s not his fault,” Josephine replied and she took a drink. Her words slurred and her eyes drooped. “No one’s fault. No one’s fault.” She repeated the phrase and then snickered at it without a hint of mirth.

“Blair needs to be put to bed.”

“You do it.” She raised her eyebrows.

He stared at her. “Look at this. I found her paper.” He held up his prized white sheet with excitement. Josephine made a grab for it, but Huck pulled it way. “No, no. Not yet.”

“It’s just a stupid school paper, Huck. You’ve put so much into it...like it matters. Like any of this,” she waved her hand, the side of it hit the chair, but she didn’t flinch, “matters.”

“What makes today different?” he asked her. He folded the paper and held it in his lap.

His wife looked at him and then hiccupped a lone, reluctant sob. Straightening her back, she tilted her head toward the sky. “Because it’s over.” Then he turned to him, her eyes wet and glistening.

“In one sense...”

“In every…single…sense.”

“Kymberlin believed. She believed in greatness and she had her own ideas! She was going to be a great engineer someday.”

Josephine laughed. “Oh...to be dead. Everyone remembers you how they wanted you to be.”

Huck recoiled from the statement. “But—”

“She was perfect. But she was lost. Amazing. Brilliant. Kind. But flighty. You hold that paper like it’s a key to our daughter...but it was just a fantasy, Huck. She wrote that paper to impress you. You think if our daughter was still alive, she’d want you throwing everything into her hippy-dippy ideas of communal living? Abandoning your business, your friends...because you thought that you could save the world?”

“We are at war.”

Josephine brought the glass to her lips and threw back the rest of the wine. Then she took the glass and held it out over the chair and let it drop, the stem cracking and the bowl shattering into tiny pieces.

“We will always be at war,” came her reply.

And Huck ran his fingers over the crease in the paper again and again.

“Give it to me,” she commanded, and he handed the paper over. She examined it, shaking her head. “It’s kid stuff. Science fiction. There is nothing even remotely possible about building this utopia of hers. You are so blinded by what you wanted her to become. She was a child when she wrote this. A child!”

“She was still a child!” Huck replied. “Maybe, just maybe, if we listen to children—”

Josephine raised a finger and cautioned him with one look. Then she stood up and brushed herself off and stepped over the shards of glass with delicate tiptoes.

“At least say goodnight to Blair before you pass out,” Huck whispered to her back. “At least pretend like you give a damn about her.”

“I have nothing to give that child,” she replied, and she waltzed to the edge of the building, putting her hand on the protective lattice.

“You fought for that child,” he snapped. He rose to his feet. “You can’t give her back because she isn’t Kymberlin! You can’t punish her because she wasn’t the clone you hoped for.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he hung his head, his chin resting against his chest. “I’m sorry—” he looked up, but Josephine hadn’t turned. “That was wrong.”

“You are right,” she said to the wind. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Blair would be better off if she had never have been born.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he pleaded, practically begging. “We wanted joy...we wanted happiness...peace.”

She turned and exhaled, the edges of her mouth rising in a snarl. “Go find it.”

Huck paused. He stepped forward. He felt the glass under his feet. “Jo—”

She took a step onto the cement wall and brought her legs up under her. She tottered for a second and then kicked the lattice swiftly to the street, where it fell with a distant crash. “You have my blessing to find happiness. Peace.” She balled up the paper he had taken so much time to locate; crushed it in her hand and tossed it out to the night air. Huck watched the paper disappear and he spun to the rooftop door, taking several steps before turning and then taking a step back toward Josephine.

She stepped up and over the cement barrier and to the ledge below. Then she turned and reached her hands up above her head, her dress rippling like waves.

“Josephine!” he called and he imagined himself running after her, arms flailing, reaching, reaching for her hand and grabbing her bony wrists. He closed his eyes tight and called her name again, his voice echoing and bouncing off the other buildings—the other condos and apartments, their curtains wide with people milling about, going through the motions of their day, oblivious to all facets of their tragedy.

When he opened his eyes, his wife was gone. The space she had occupied consumed by darkness.

And his feet remained rooted against the cement roof, planted over the remnants of the wine glass, crunching the pieces as he shifted this way and that—searching the void and hoping for her shape to materialize. After a long minute, a gust of wind shook him into a startled inhale. He turned and walked back to the stairwell, his hands clenched into fists by his side. When he looked one last time, silent tears stung his cheeks, and Huck wondered if he would be able to find Kymberlin’s school paper drifting on the street. He noted the wind trajectory and tried to remember which way she had dropped it. Closing his eyes, he watched her ball up the white paper and he imagined being the paper, sliding past the eastside windows, maybe landing outside the pizza parlor or the nail shop. It had to be down there; the paper was waiting for him to find it. He would find it.