She thought again of Sunny, how she’d been so angry with the boys earlier, with all of them. She thought about how she hardly knew Ré, how he’d always moved on the periphery. Shaun’s dark, unknowable shadow. “Secrets?” she asked.
He smiled with just the corner of his lips. “Yeah, secrets,” he said. “And, I mean, what about the baby? What are you going to do?” At last he turned to look at her. “I’m not judging in any way. I only want to know how to help you, what I should do.”
Evie closed her eyes. The baby.
It wasn’t even a real thing. Just an alien swimming through her, not connected to anything—not to Shaun, not even to herself. A tiny, distant star inside her that she couldn’t even feel. The thought of it just made her sick all over again. She pictured her mom raising a kid alone, sixteen years on, no days off. She thought of Shaun’s nan. Of Shaun, abandoned. Evie flopped down onto her side, into the pillows, and covered her face, trying hard not to cry.
Ré did nothing at first. Said nothing. Then he moved, tentative, bedsprings bowing under his weight as he lay down behind her. He wrapped his arm around her, knees up under hers, tucking her into the curve of him and holding her, breathing until they both fell asleep.
R
Ré dreams he is wrapped around the rib cage of a large creature whose breath expands through him, pushing into him, pinning him down. It doesn’t hurt, but he is unable to break free. He is carried by the creature as it moves across a snow-covered plain. Searching, hungry.
He can’t see what lies ahead, only what circles behind—six howling wolves. They are fearless. They lope up through chest-deep snow and sniff the air, then discuss in yips and barks what they have found: a sinner, a killer. And the creature keeps moving forward, ferrying Ré along.
Between the trees, white eyes stare out at him, white antlers move. The creature is taking him to them.
Something takes his hand, curves into him, pulling him closer, and he feels his arm begin to stretch, thinning like gum until his hand falls off completely. Then his other hand goes. His teeth crumble. He collapses, boneless ash, into the snow.
E
Evie woke to Ré’s crying, the back of her neck damp with his breath. It was the same painful sound as in the car the day after Shaun was found. Sharp, wheezy breaths, a high, rasping whine. She rolled over in his arms to face him, tucking her head under his chin, cheek to his collarbone, fitting herself into him.
Her arm snaked out from under his to wrap around his body and pull him tight against her. She held him as he cried, and he held her, arms closing around her like a soft trap.
R
When they woke again, it was dark.
He sucked a breath and rolled onto his back, rubbing his eyes with his fist.
“What time is it?” he asked, voice thick with sleep. She stayed curled up, not looking at the clock. “Ev, I gotta go.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Okay,” she mumbled.
He looked at her, fingers touching her hair. “I didn’t mean to stay,” he said. “I guess I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re complicated right now.”
He laughed softly. “So are you, Ev.”
She smiled, tucking into him again for one last moment.
Then she rolled onto her back and stretched out, toes touching the brass rails of the footboard, hands stretching between the headboard rails to touch the wall.
He propped himself up on one elbow and lowered his other hand to her belly. The bump was almost nothing, just a slight rise, a firmness of flesh, but he imagined that what he felt was alive. That it kicked and swam against his palm, a selkie child.
Ré was the first of five sons. He’d touched the pregnant belly of a woman before. But it hadn’t felt like this—like strange wonder leaping in his skin.
His heart began to tap, tap, tap. His breath became heavy. He knew he shouldn’t—there were so many reasons why he shouldn’t—but he did it anyway: he pushed up the hem of her thin shirt.
His fingers fell to her bare flesh, and the heat annihilated him.
“Evie…” he breathed, heart stomping through his throat and his hands and his legs so hard it shook him.
All the things he wanted to say. A tide of secrets ebbed against his tongue, pushing him to speak, to lean down and whisper against her throat. How good would it feel to just tell her everything? To confess it all. Be absolved…
He bit his lips together and closed his eyes.
Fuck.
He pushed away.
Scrambling onto his heels, he scrubbed his hands over his face to wake himself, to break her spell. He felt like he’d been sucking carbon dioxide, breathing her breath until they were both suffocating. The small, hot room was thick with dreams, loosening his grip on things. Like she’d done last night, in the water, in his car—luring him out from reality toward something that felt like hope.
“I gotta go,” he said, not looking at her.
He crawled over her and opened the bedroom door, desperate for air. He stuffed his feet into the shoes he’d left on the landing, feeling her eyes, big and blue, pinned to his back. But he didn’t want to look. Couldn’t look. He couldn’t stand to see the hurt in those eyes, if there was any—or feel his own if there wasn’t. He just had to get away.
E
After the roar of the Buick had faded down the road, Evie sat up in bed. She drew Shaun’s long blond hair from her pocket and stretched it again between her fingers. In the dim light, it looked fragile white, not gold.
“Can you feel that?” Shaun had asked, low and sweet. Wrapped up here
