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That night, Evan came to visit her again.

It was Annie’s standard nightmare, the one that had plagued her for so many nights, but which, for reasons she did not know

but was not about to question, had been recurring less frequently.

Tonight, it was back, but this time, with a different ending.

“Evan, come back inside. We’re ten floors up. If you step off that ledge you’ll be very badly hurt. Your Mom and Dad won’t be pleased. They’ll be angry. With you, and with me.”

“It’s okay. I told you. I can fly.”

“Six-year-old boys can’t fly. You don’t have feathers. You don’t have wings.”

“Yes, I do. I made them.”

“Those are cardboard, Evan. Held on with tape. They won’t keep you up.”

“Pierce Penguin can fly. And penguins aren’t supposed to be able to fly.”

“He’s pretend .”

“Pierce Penguin says you can do anything you put your mind to. Mom reads the book to me all the time.”

“Evan, what Pierce’s saying is, be the best little boy you can be, but it doesn’t mean you can turn into a bird and fly or

be a fish and live underwater or be a squirrel and climb trees.”

“You’re wrong. I can fly.”

“Evan, just take my hand and come back—”

But then, suddenly, Evan was not Evan. Evan was Charlie.

“Here I go!”

Annie woke with a start.

The following afternoon, she was sitting on the front porch, reading her Patchett book, when she saw Daniel on the other side

of the road, laboriously cutting his front lawn with a gas-powered mower that looked as though it dated back to the sixties

or seventies. The yard was probably sixty feet square, and Annie had no idea how much there was to cut out back of the house.

It was pushing eighty-five degrees today, and Daniel had to stop every few minutes to wipe the sweat off his brow.

The guy’s gonna have a heart attack , she thought.

And he might not be the only one.

Charlie had taken a break from his railroad empire to ride his bike, doing more laps around the house at full tilt. Every

time he passed the porch, Annie would look up from her book to check his condition. If he appeared to be on the verge of total

exhaustion, she would put a stop to it. But so far—and this was lap... sixteen?—he seemed okay.

Her eyes went back to Daniel. She hadn’t spoken to him since the storm, when Dolores had confronted them. She wasn’t avoiding

him; they simply hadn’t both been outside at the same time.

Time to end the awkwardness, she thought. And, given that Dolores was not sitting on the porch, this was a perfect opportunity.

She went into the house and got two cold beers out of the refrigerator and—careful not to step in front of Charlie as he made

his latest loop—marched them across the road as Daniel was making his final pass across the yard.

He killed the engine—it sputtered a few times in protest, as if it were saying, Come on, let’s keep going! —as Annie approached, and he took the beer from her without any hesitation.

“Returning the favor,” she said, and held out her bottle for a clink, which he weakly accepted. “It’s too hot for this.”

“Can’t exactly leave it till September,” he said. “Don’t want the neighbors reporting me.” He tipped back the beer bottle.

“This’ll be my one for the day, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.” He let out a long breath. “Need to get off my

feet.”

Daniel walked over to his porch steps, sat, and held out a hand, inviting Annie to join him.

“I’ve been meaning to come over and apologize,” he said.

“No apology necessary.”

He shook his head strongly. “Nope, it is. Sorry about Dolores coming over and giving you a piece of her mind. That was uncalled-for.”

“It’s okay,” Annie said. “I understand.”

“Do you?”

That caught her off guard. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to presume or—”

He raised a hand. “I just, I don’t know how anyone else can understand when I don’t, and I live with her twenty-four hours

a day.”

Annie went quiet.

Daniel looked across the road and grinned. “Look who just ran out of gas.”

Charlie had let his bike drop in front of the porch steps and run into the house. “He’ll probably drink a gallon of lemonade,”

Annie said. “I don’t know what’s got into him. He’s either riding that bike like a maniac or upstairs playing with those trains.”

Daniel turned his head. “That so.”

“I wish there were more kids around. I hadn’t really thought about that when I took the place. So far, Charlie seems to be entertaining himself okay, and I like it just being the two of us, but maybe I’m being selfish.”

“He’s riding that bike hard enough to be training for the Olympics,” Daniel said, picking at the beer bottle label with his

thumb. “If you don’t mind my asking, what was it Dolores was saying to you?”

“I hardly remember. It doesn’t matter.’

“Well, maybe not to you, but I’d like to know.”

Annie took a breath. “She asked us what we were thinking. A few times.”

“Anything else?”

Annie shook her head. “That’s all. And, you know, the rain was coming down, and there was thunder, so if she said anything

else I might have missed it.”

“Okay.”

“I’d wondered if she’s upset with us taking the place for the summer. Because—I don’t know—because of what happened to her

there? That she thinks anyone living there is making a mistake?”

“Could be,” Daniel said. “You know, when we were talking the other day, I said that this thing what happened to her, that

it was like this time bomb in her head, it was gonna go off one day, and it happened to go off when she was over there. Could’ve

been anyplace, but that was where it happened.”

“I remember.”

“I might not have been totally frank with you about that.”

Even with the temperature in the eighties, Annie felt a slight chill.

“I mean, maybe she did have some sort of disposition to something bad happening, but I believe it was triggered by something

in that house.”

“Christ, what are you saying?” She managed a sardonic chuckle. “That the place is haunted ?”

“No, no, I’m not saying that. I strike you as the kind of person who’d believe in that nonsense?”

“I haven’t known you long enough to make that call,” Annie said, an edge to her voice. “My son and I took that house for the

summer because we needed to get away, to get our lives back together. Because we’ve been through some bad shit in the last

year, and the suggestion that our place already has ghosts and goblins as tenants, well, that’s not helpful.”

“The boy who jumped,” Daniel said.

The world seemed to stop. Annie stared at him, openmouthed. “What did you say?”

“You told me about your husband, that he’d passed. But there was the boy who thought he could fly. I may look like someone

who hasn’t moved on since the eight-track tape, but I’m actually hooked up to the Interweb .” He stressed the last word to make sure she knew he was having her on. “Your name kinda rang a bell and I googled you and

I know about the boy. That’s a horrible thing.”

“It’s no business of yours.”

“Believe me when I say I mean no offense. What happened to you, that’s out in the public. I didn’t pry. And I’m very sorry

for what you’ve been through. I’m not going to repeat what I am guessing a hundred people have already told you about blame

and responsibility. What I will say is that I think we can all be captive to events that are out of our control.”

Annie was still too angry to say anything.

“I want to ask you about that train you said you heard in the night.”

“What?”

“I said you must have heard something else, because there’s no trains running around here anymore. The A&B went bankrupt. I know the crossing’s just up the road there, they still got the signs up, but there’s nothing that passes through.”

“So I heard something else, then. Or I was dreaming.”

“I don’t think you were dreaming.”

Annie took a breath. She’d grown weary of this discussion. She was sorry she’d brought the beers over. She wanted to get up

and go back to her place. She took a final swallow of her drink—the bottle was only half empty—and stood.

“I really should get back to Charlie,” she said.

“Did you not hear what I said? I don’t think you were dreaming.”

“Okay, so I heard a truck, or something. What does it matter?”

Daniel set his beer down on the step and struggled to his feet, putting his hands on his knees for leverage.

“I believe you heard it. I believe you heard a train, even though there’s no train to be heard.”

Annie didn’t know what he was driving at.

And then he said, “Because Dolores heard it, too.” He paused. “Last few days, I think even I’m hearing something.”