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The calm inside me is like nothing I have known. The focus is precise. Because when I see them climbing the ladder of the shaft I know they can’t get out through the vault, which means if I can’t get this hatch open then the woman I love and my boy, my baby boy, are both going to die. So I will get the hatch open.

I always thought it had just rusted over, but I see now that it’s been intentionally welded shut, no doubt when the fur-trade storage facility got turned into a giant freezer and they needed to make sure it was properly sealed. This is a problem, because what I thought would be a quick job with the angle grinder is actually turning into a very difficult task with a tool that might not be sufficient for it.

There is no way I’d have enough time to go back for different tools. Not even close. I have to use what I’ve got.

I make the decision to break the glass while they’re down near the bottom, rather than waiting for them to get any closer. They’ll need air, and we’ll need to communicate. The window is too small for them to get through, you could reach an arm out, or shove half your face through, but that’s it.

I grind at the metal. I wear away at it. I don’t let my thoughts wander, I concentrate.

Look at what you have done , she says.

Don’t listen.

You wanted this. Remember?

Please stop.

Remember all those years ago. At the very beginning. There was a moment. Go back there.

No.

I will bring the moment to you here, then.

I was out of my mind.

Yes. And still. You thought it. You wished him dead, if it meant I could live.

It is so clear to me, suddenly. This isn’t my wife. It is not Claire and it never has been. Claire is a woman so complex and so profoundly loving that she gave her life for her child’s. This creature is my own monstrousness and nothing more.

Who should have to suffer the grief of losing their partner entangled with such confusion? Such guilt? I have never been able to grieve for her simply or purely because I have always had to contend with my own shame, my own responsibility, and the idea of the choice I made between the two of them. I never grieved properly because it felt like to do so meant wanting to trade my son for her, to make the other choice, but how is that fair? How is that a choice that is possible? Even the hypothetical of it is sickening, it is too much to ask of anyone, but it has been my constant companion.

There is a truth that needs to be spoken, if only within me.

I tell this thing—my ghost, my haunting—very clearly.

I will not be a prisoner of this choice any longer. I will love my son expansively, and I will feel no guilt for it. I will miss my wife, always. And I will be free of you.

I look through the hatch at my boy. He is gazing up at me, waiting. There is no fear in his eyes. He trusts me to save him.