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They had a quiet evening.

Annie opened up a jar of spaghetti sauce in the cupboard, warmed it on the stove, and slid some fettucine noodles into a pot

of boiling water. A sprinkle of Parmesan, and voilà, world’s simplest dinner. Charlie was at that age where he would take

some cooked noodles—buttered or with tomato sauce—over just about any other food, and on this particular night Annie was content

with the same.

After dinner they watched some TV. Charlie was right, the channels were all in different places than in the city, and there

weren’t nearly as many of them here, but the house was still equipped with wi-fi and there was always streaming. They watched

Galaxy Quest , which had been one of John’s favorite movies because it was such a great send-up of the whole Star Trek franchise, but Charlie

took it at face value, as an exciting science fiction adventure with a few laughs. When Alan Rickman, in full alien garb,

announces after a harrowing encounter with another spaceship that he’s off to find the pub, Annie cracked up. It had been

John’s favorite line.

Uncharacteristically, Charlie turned down his mother’s offer of a story, claiming to be too tired. And within seconds of tucking

him in, Annie peered through a crack in the doorway and could see that he was out cold.

She tidied up the kitchen, watched Anderson Cooper on CNN, and when that was over she was ready for an early turn-in. But on her way to her bedroom she went back into the studio to take another look at what she had drawn that afternoon.

It was a messy sketch, not surprisingly, given that she had drawn it without actually looking at the paper. Even now, it was

hard for her to describe where her mind had gone while she was drawing. She’d been looking up at the sky, through the two

skylights, imagining, perhaps, that she was a bird, flying around up there, gazing down upon the house from the heavens. In

the past, when she’d experimented with automatic drawing—clearing her head, letting her fingers seemingly work independently

of her brain—she’d never had much to show for it.

Today had been different.

This was no adorable penguin she’d sketched.

She had drawn the man from Penn Station.

He was a kind of hybrid. Part rat, part coyote, with a dash of werewolf added to the mix.

He had a human-like figure, but with the rat-wolf head. Not some cute, Disney-like rat (or wolf), either. This was a nasty

piece of work with piercing eyes and small, sharp, piranha-like teeth that could nibble off your fingers in an instant. He

(she assumed it was a he ) was dressed in a kind of long jacket, like a trench coat, and his feet were bare. They were oversized and furry, with long

ragged nails. A bushy tail curled up from under the coat.

“ Good luck turning him into a bestseller ,” she heard John say in the back of her mind.

As rough as the sketch was, Annie had to admit that, from a purely professional standpoint, it was not half bad. If you were

out to create a cartoon villain, you could do a lot worse.

But what in Annie’s subconscious had led her to put this image on a sheet of paper? What had prompted her to dredge up a distant memory from childhood that might not even have been real? Sure, she’d endured the worst year ever. She’d suffered guilt, she’d endured loss. Was this how it manifested itself?

She sat in the chair, picked up the pencil, and refined some of the character’s features. Made the teeth more individual,

sharper. Worked some creases into the trench coat. Added some little hairs to the feet.

Were the creative impulses within her trying to send a message? Were they telling her to retire Pierce permanently? Was it

time to abandon cute for creepy?

Take that pain. Take that hurt. Turn it into something.

Was that what was happening?

She put down the pencil and managed a smile. She imagined the look on Fin’s face when she told him she was abandoning a cute

penguin for this nightmarish character. He’d have a heart attack. Even if she had no intention of switching gears, it would

still be fun to tell him.

Annie left the study, turned out the light, and retired to her room. Once under the covers, she plugged her phone into the

charger cord on her bedside table, tried to read a few pages of her novel, but when she found herself unable to keep her eyes

open, she hit the light and went to sleep.

Charlie had a dream.

Shortly after midnight, he saw himself on the front porch, in the middle of the day, polishing the wheels on his bicycle,

when someone came walking up the driveway. At first the man’s features were vague and ill-defined, but as he got closer, Charlie

could see that it was his father.

“Hi, Charlie,” said John.

Charlie came down the porch steps and said, “Hi, Dad. It sure is good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too. I’ve missed ya.”

Charlie was surprised he hadn’t burst into tears. But it was like his dad had never actually died. He’d just been away for

a while.

“Mom’s going to be happy to see you.”

“Oh, I bet, but it’s you I’ve come to see,” John said. “I’ve come to help you with something. To show you something.”

“What?”

“May I come inside?”

Charlie nodded and led his father into the house.

“Let’s go to the basement,” John said.

Charlie noticed that he made no noise when he walked. It was almost like he was floating. Charlie opened the door that led

to the cellar, turned on the light, and went down the steps, his father following closely behind.

“There’s nothing down here,” Charlie said. “I looked the first day.”

“You missed something.”

“What?”

His father led him over to the workbench and opened the drawer that Charlie had inspected before. The one filled with old

nails and rusted pipe fittings.

“Have a look in there again.”

Charlie moved around the various pieces of metal junk with his fingers until he saw something he had not seen before. He picked

it up.

“What do we have there?” John asked.

“It’s a key,” Charlie said.

And just like that, his father was gone. There wasn’t even a poof of smoke. He was there one second, and gone the next.

That was when Charlie woke up.

At first he wondered if he’d been sleepwalking, and really had had a visit from his father. But Charlie was right in his bed. Then again, he could have sleepwalked his way back to his room, slipped under the covers.

He blinked a few times, rolled onto his side, and looked at the digital clock: 12:35 a.m. Charlie usually slept through the

night, waking up around eight. But right now he felt every bit as awake as he would have when the sun was up.

He slipped out of bed, kept his pajamas on but pulled on his running shoes and laced them up. The house was dark except for

slivers of moonlight streaming through the windows. He didn’t want to turn on any lights for fear it might wake his mother.

But he also needed to see where he was going. He crept quietly into his mother’s bedroom. She wasn’t snoring, but he could

hear deep breathing, so he knew she was asleep. He tiptoed to her bedside and unplugged her phone from the charging cord,

and, when he was back in the hallway, brought up the flashlight app.

Charlie descended the stairs and rounded the corner to the door that led down to the basement, shining the light ahead of

him. Once he was atop the first step and had the door closed behind him, it was safe to flick on a light.

Even with the bare bulb illuminated, and the room largely deserted, the basement was not a place where he felt at ease. A

little chill ran up his spine, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up when he reached the floor, although it might

have been that Charlie was more excited than frightened.

Charlie walked over to the workbench, pulled out the drawer, and dug his fingers into the mix of rusty nails and pipe clamps

and screws of varying sizes until he felt something small, smooth, and thin.

A key.

He grabbed it between his thumb and forefinger, lifted it out of the drawer, and brought it up to his nose for a closer inspection. It sure looked like a key that would open a padlock. Like the one on the shed door.

Charlie came back up the stairs, flicking off the light before he returned to the main floor and reengaged the flashlight

app. He walked to the front door, opened it noiselessly, and stepped onto the porch. No security pad to worry about here.

Nothing to disarm.

No bad guys in this part of the world.

He closed the door behind him and descended the porch steps. Even with his running shoes on, he could feel the dampness in

the grass. Nighttime dew blanketed everything. Using the phone’s light, he rounded the house and headed for the shed, the

key gripped so firmly in the palm of his left hand that it was creating an impression in his skin.

Charlie reached the shed, set the phone on the ground, screen pointed up so the shed door was illuminated, and tried to insert

the key into the padlock. He had it turned the wrong way the first time, figured out his mistake, and tried again. The key

slid in nicely. Holding the lock firmly in his left hand, Charlie turned the key with his right.

The lock came undone.

Charlie slid it off the hook and opened the door. It was pitch-dark in the shed, and, feeling around the inside of the frame,

Charlie could find no light switch. He picked the phone up off the ground and shined it inside.

As he’d already speculated, the shed was filled with various tools and garden-related items. Three rakes and two shovels. An old gas-powered lawn mower that, judging by the rust and the pull-cord that dangled from its housing, hadn’t been fired up in a very long time. Three bags of fertilizer and one of grass seed, some of it leaking out a hole that had no doubt been made by a mouse. There were four folded lawn chairs with webbing so far into the disintegration process that no one could have sat in them without risking grievous bodily harm, an electric hedge trimmer, a couple of extension cords, gardening gloves, a seed-spreading machine.

None of this held any interest for Charlie.

He was focused on the box tucked into the back corner of the structure.

He stepped over to it, pointed the phone flashlight for a better look.

This was what had been calling to him. This was what had been demanding to be found.

A cardboard box about two-by-two-by-three feet. Probably had once held packages of detergent, judging by the word printed

boldly on the side.

tide .