Jeremy was over the postcards already. He’d stood up and turned his attention to the murals Rafe had painted on the walls, the ceiling, even the wooden staircase that led up to his loft bedroom. His mother said it looked like Bob Ross had dropped acid—trees gone mad, impossible mountains, strange valleys. He’d painted it so that every time you walked into the room, you saw something different.

“Did you ever remember anything from when we were missing?” Jeremy asked.

“Nothing,” Rafe said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, why?”

Jeremy faced him. “How much time do I have now?”

“Thirteen minutes. Good time to tell me why you’re here.”

Jeremy went to the window and looked out. Nothing to see out there but the trail that led deep into the woods.

“What is this place?” Jeremy asked. “Starcross Hill? Some kind of nature preserve?”

“You want to waste your thirteen minutes asking me about my place?”

“Talk fast. Use lots of words in a short span of time. Go.”

“It’s just a hill. About a thousand acres. Some old-growth forest, so you have to keep an eye on it. I don’t own the hill itself, but Dad bought the cabin for hunting after he retired. Now it’s mine. I get to use the land in return for keeping an eye on it.”

Jeremy turned away from the window. “You like it here?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. It’s about the only thing Dad and I ever agreed on. He said he wanted to die out here. He got his wish.”

“I’m sorry.” Jeremy sounded almost sincere. Rafe didn’t buy it.

“Are you?”

“Sorry for you.”

Jeremy turned away from the window and pointed at the east wall, where Rafe had painted a sprawling spring woodland. Under the canopy of the pink and mossy green trees, animals ran, leaped, and danced—a silver tiger, a golden wildcat, snow-white deer, and smoke-gray foxes.

“Nice paint job,” Jeremy said. “Different. More people should have hallucinogenic murals in their houses.”

“I can paint over them if I ever sell the place.”

“You’ll paint them over my dead body,” Jeremy said.

Rafe hated that he liked that, hated it enough that he pretended he hadn’t heard Jeremy say it.

“You made this too?”

Jeremy stopped at the fireplace mantel to examine a carved wooden crow.

“Yeah.”

“When did you start sculpting?”

“It’s just whittling.”

“This is not whittling. This is a sculpture. Did you teach yourself or what?”

If Jeremy was awed by one little crow carving, he would lose his mind over the sculpture garden in the back of the cabin.

“I started a few years ago,” he said, “when painting didn’t, I don’t know…it wasn’t enough anymore.”

“No, I get it,” he said.

A framed photograph sat on the mantel next to the crow, Rafe’s parents on their honeymoon in 1989, back when his dad had a motorcycle, long hair, and a beard, and his mother wore sundresses and cowboy hats.

“Your dad looked good with a beard. You don’t,” Jeremy said.

“You sound like Mom. She won’t even let me in the house until I shave.”

“Your mother was always the brains in the family. How is she?”

“She’s good.”

“I sent her flowers after the funeral.”

“I know. She appreciated that.”

Without being invited, Jeremy sat on the sofa beside Rafe’s bow and quiver.

“You’re still shooting with your dad’s bow?”

“It does the job,” Rafe said. He stayed standing, not wanting Jeremy to get too comfortable.

Jeremy drew an arrow from the quiver. He looked at the broadhead tip and then at Rafe. “What were you hunting out there? Dragons?”

“Poachers.”

“You didn’t kill them, did you?”

“They were baiting a mother bear and her cubs trying to fatten up for winter. I just scared them off.”

Jeremy eased the arrow back into the quiver. “Then I admire your restraint.”

He reached for the chain on the old lamp with the taped-up cord but instead picked up a red trolley toy. He smiled.

“You still have this?” Jeremy spun the trolley’s wheels.

“Of course.”

“Mum kept mine too.”