Pip's tongue is a small, pink point between his teeth. His fingers are tight on a stub of charcoal. He presses too hard. A sharp snap. The charcoal breaks. He picks up the larger piece without a word and continues. The scrape that follows is softer, more careful.

  Across the room, Evangeline's finger traces the rim of a cold cup of tea, making a slow, endless circle.

  I move from the shadows. One step. Then another. I stand behind my son, my shadow swallowing his drawing.

  It is a clumsy sketch. Thick. Unsure. A man made of sticks. A sun of pale hair explodes from his head. Above him, the tree is a black claw.

  "What you drawing there, bud?" My voice is a blunt thing in the quiet. Too loud.

  Pip's hand does not stop. He adds another branch to the tree. "It's my other daddy."

  My hand, resting on the back of his chair, clenches. The wood digs into my palm.

  "Mama tells me stories about him. Says he lives in the trees now."

  Evangeline's finger stops. A small, still point on the rim of the cup. Her faint smile is gone, scrubbed from her face.

  Her eyes flick from Pip to me, then break, finding the floor. "He just gets ideas in his head."

  Her hands find each other in her lap, fingers twisting.

  I pull out a chair and sit. The wood is cold against my back. Opposite me, Pip keeps drawing.

  "He looks lonely," I say.

  Evangeline's hands stop their frantic work. She just stares at me. The skin between her eyebrows creases.

  Pip's hand goes still. He looks up at me, and there is a strange, quiet certainty in his eyes.

  "He's not lonely," he says. "He's just waiting. For me to come find him."

  He turns back to the paper. The charcoal scrapes with a fierce intensity. Another figure takes shape. Smaller. A hard line connects their hands.

  Then he looks at me again, his eyes bright. He gives the man a smile, two small lines hooking the mouth upward.

  I do not breathe. I cannot.

  A sound tears from my throat, a raw, choked thing. "You got his smile wrong."

  The confusion on Evangeline's face hardens. Her arms come up, crossing over her chest. "What's that supposed to mean, James?"

  I open my mouth to speak, but it is full of his resentment. A thick, foul taste. I say nothing.

  Her head tilts. Just an inch. Her eyes narrow. She is studying me, waiting for the cruel joke. The cutting remark.

  My mind is a frantic search. A desperate rummage through a dead man's pockets. Empty.

  Then, a nerve fires.

  The tavern. Years ago. Before Evangeline. I sit alone in a corner, nursing a half-empty mug. Across the room, Eli leans back in his chair, a grin splitting his face, telling some stupid story about a talking squirrel.

  Every face is a stupid, open mouth. Waiting. He gives them the punchline, and they bark with laughter, a pack of grateful dogs.

  I am not one of them.

  The feeling that comes with the memory is a sour knot in the pit of my stomach.

  Envy. Resentment.

  Useless.

  I crush it.

  I strip the feeling away. I am left with the facts. The story. The laughter.

  "I mean, everyone knew that smile. The one he'd get in the tavern," I say. I force the bitterness from my voice.

  "He'd start in on some nonsense about a talking squirrel, and the whole damn room would go silent." My head shakes. "Never got what they saw in him. But whatever it was, Pip has it. That fire."

  Evangeline's shoulders, which had been bunched tight to her ears, slump. Her arms uncross, falling limp to her sides. The hardness in her face cracks, revealing a deep, weary confusion beneath.

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  A sound breaks from her. A half-laugh, half-sob. "He did," she says. "He could lie so beautifully you'd thank him for it."

  She breathes my name. "James." The word is a probe, searching for a wound.

  She shakes her head, a slow, bewildered motion. "In five years, I have never once heard you say a kind word about that man."

  She closes the space between us. One step. Her hands lift, as if to touch my face, then fall back to her sides. Her eyes search mine. "What's changed?"

  I look her in the eye. I give her the kindest, most cruel thing I can. A lie built from the truth of her husband's pain.

  "I'm tired." The words are rough. Unpractised. "Tired of letting my pride poison this house."

  My head turns to Pip at the table, his small hand still moving the charcoal. "I see Eli in our son. The good parts. The parts I hated because they weren't mine. I can't hate them anymore. Not in him."

  A film of moisture covers her eyes, catching the firelight. A sob tears from her throat, a sound she tries and fails to swallow.

  Her hand finds my cheek. Her thumb is a soft pressure, tracing a line on my skin.

  "It's okay to miss him," I say.

  The scrape of Pip's chair is a raw sound in the sudden quiet. He crosses the floor. Then, a pressure at my waist. His small arms. He pulls us together, his cheek pressed against my side. Evangeline's arms circle us both. Her breath is a warm, wet thing against my neck.

  We lie in the dark, a chasm of sheets between us.

  Evangeline rolls over. In the weak light from the window, her tears are small, silver scars on her cheeks.

  "You are a good man, James," she whispers.

  The words are the sound of the cage door locking shut.

  Her hand reaches across the space between us and takes mine. The warmth of her skin is a shock. A jolt to a dead nerve.

  "I have always loved you," she says. "But I think... I love you more now than I ever have before. You're not just a good man. You are the strongest man I know."

  Her hand holds mine in the dark. I look into her loving eyes and see myself reflected there. A monster.

  I blink, trying to erase the reflection. But when I open my eyes, the light in hers is gone.

  Her face, inches from mine, so full of life a moment ago, begins to lose its depth. The lines of her jaw, the curve of her cheek. They flatten.

  My hand, the one she is not holding, clenches. A phantom splinter of wood digs into my palm.

  The scent of her skin, the clean smell of soap, begins to sour. It curdles into the smell of stale air and forgotten things…

  I am in his cabin. He's been gone a month.

  I find her there. She is just sitting.

  I do not speak. Words are pointless. I find the broom. I begin to sweep. The sound is a dry whisper in the quiet.

  The dust rises in the grey light. Motes rise. Settle. Rise again. An hour passes. Maybe more. I work from one corner to the next, a slow, pointless battle against the decay.

  Something stops the broom. A soft, stubborn weight under the bed.

  I kneel. The air under the bed is colder, stiller.

  I reach into the dust and shadows. My hand finds it. It is small, and the texture is wrong. A dry, skin-like surface over something that gives.

  I draw it into the light.

  It is dark. Featureless. A vaguely human shape, like a root that tried to grow into a man and failed. It is no bigger than my fist.

  A cold dread turns in my stomach. This thing does not belong in the world. It is a piece of some other, darker place.

  I look over at Evangeline. A broken shape in the dust. She does not need another nightmare.

  I sweep the husk into the dustpan. Its small, dark shape disappears under a layer of dust and pine needles. I carry the filth outside.

  When I return, the light in the cabin has changed. A small shadow stands in the doorway, blocking the sun.

  It is Belladonna, no older than eleven.

  Her eyes are not a child's eyes. They are old stones, taking in every detail of the room.

  Her stare finds mine. "Anything?" The question is a sharp, pointed stick.

  A nerve in my jaw jumps. My eyes slide past her for a heartbeat, to the pile of filth where the wrongness is hidden.

  I force my eyes back to hers. I empty my face of everything.

  My head shakes. My mouth opens. "No."

  She gives a sharp nod and is gone.

  I go back to sweeping. Then Evangeline's voice, a dead, flat sound from the corner, cuts through the quiet. "He's not coming back, is he?"

  The broom stills in my hands. The husk I hid. The lie I told Belladonna. Two secrets, and the simple wood of the handle is now too heavy to lift.

  I look at her, at the raw, open hope still flickering in her eyes.

  "No," I say. "He's not."

  She nods. A tear breaks free, cutting a clean path through the dust on her cheek. She doesn't wipe it away.

  I sweep the last of the dust into the pan. I take it outside. I throw away the dust. The husk, I keep.

  That night, in my workshop, it sits on the bench. A small, dark, lonely thing. An orphan. My gut tells me to burn it. But my hands, my stupid, gentle hands, have another idea. My hands want to give it a home.

  I pick up a block of maple.

  I carve.

  The blade bites deep, hollowing out a spiral. A shell.

  I place the husk inside.

  I seal it.

  It is a snail now. Just a piece of wood for a shelf. It looks like all the other woodland creatures I carve. But I know what it really is.

  The memory dissolves. Her hand is still in mine. A small, warm presence in the dark.

  Then, a sickening pulse. A sudden, squirming jolt deep in the tissue of my arm. My hand rips away from hers, a sharp, involuntary gasp tearing from my throat.

  Evangeline flinches back, the warmth in her eyes extinguished. A familiar, tired sadness settles on her face.

  "I'm sorry," she says, her back turning to me. "I shouldn't have. It's too soon. You're still grieving."

  I stare at the back of her head. The squirming under my skin intensifies. A cold, wet crawl down my arm, into the hand she just held.

  I lift that hand into the faint moonlight from the window.

  The skin is alive. Moving.

  It stretches. Thins. Becomes translucent. Beneath it, the tissue. The fine web of veins.

  And something else.

  Something dark, shifting in my flesh.

  I bring it to my face. I squint.

  The shape comes into focus.

  An eye.

  Small. Black. Perfectly formed, swimming in the muscle and fat of my palm.

  I am stone. I cannot move.

  The eye jolts in its socket of flesh. It swivels. It finds me.

  It blinks. Slowly.

  A command screams through my mind. Hide it.

  I try to pull my hand away, to curl my fingers into a fist and bury this wrongness in my palm.

  The hand does not move.

  I try again. I put all my will into it, a desperate, silent push against my own biology. My knuckles strain. The muscles in my forearm burn, tight as a rope about to snap.

  The hand remains perfectly still, a slab of cold meat resting beside her.

  Then, a sensation. A ripple of movement under my skin.

  The alien muscle around the eye clenches, a small, stubborn knot of flesh. It is holding my hand in place.

  A sound escapes me. A sob. A quiet, wet, broken thing.

  In her sleep, Evangeline sighs. Her voice is a soft slurring of words, thick with dreams.

  "Shh, it's alright."

  Her arm shifts, a warm, gentle pressure against my hand. The hand that is now looking back at me.

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