She wrapped herself in a woolen robe and switched off the lamp, ignoring wooden crates, makeshift bookshelves. There was a faint smell of skunk. The spirit of the place was dissolute, dampness seeping into pores, soaking nerve endings. In the dark she admitted failure. The move, the commitment to McGaw, the painting. What had she been thinking? It was crazy. Her life was finished. Her people dead.

What she had left: one day at a time. One fucking day at a time. Bill is my one friend in the world.

“We’re soulmates,” McGaw had said to her once, briquettes sputtering in the grill on one of those perfect evenings in Fargo, with sun easing and clouds like mountains in the big sky. In his beret, a scarf around his neck, he was heroic, handsome like the doomed and mythical Kurt Cobain, ravaged face emerging from shadow, and she had taken his words to heart.

He was her type. It was fate.

When she woke, McGaw was gone. She warmed herself with coffee then went searching: bird sanctuary, hiking trails, deserted marina.

Once, in Fargo, he had disappeared for three days.

“How dare you!” she shouted when he returned, unshaven, dissipated.

He smiled and shrugged, an apology. “Three days,” he said, waving an arm in dismissal. “Looking at myself like a sculpture, examining life from every side, then eliminating what doesn’t belong. Now I can give myself to you. I did it for you. I love you. Let’s go away, forget everything.”

“Go? Where?”

“I have a place.”

She stopped searching a mile from the lake house, the sky dark like milky, black tea. Great clouds wheeled into sight as if announcing yet another plague. How many could there be? She pulled her shawl close.

Something moved.

She turned. Nothing.

Only a lonely loon, rasp of wind, gray light, stunted black oaks tenaciously holding their own, dim green forms of gaunt pines. She sat with her head against a tree.

“This kind of loneliness draws her like a magnet,” he had said. “Mirrors her soul. Coincidence. Synchronicity. I feel it. If we take what we see and re-create it, she’ll come.”

It was insanity.

Someone screamed her name. Or was it rough water, nerves? She could see him floating face down. A wolf finished him, left a torso, slivers of bone. The sheriff pulled up to the house, lowered his head in respect. He brought her to the morgue, a small gray room.

But it wasn’t the morgue. It was dark, muddy; she couldn’t breathe. The sheriff approached, waving pork-fat arms.

She shook awake, pulled on sandals.

Two days later, he was still missing.

They came quickly when she called, the sheriff and his deputy. One took notes. “We’ll put it on the radio.” The sheriff nodded. “An APB.” They took off hats and scratched heads in unison. It almost made her laugh. “We’ll let the Militias know. They have people everywhere.”

Overcome by their bulk, blank stares, close to hysteria, she breathed from the diaphragm to maintain self-control. The big one, the sheriff, squinted through the windows of the studio, kicked open the latched door, gun drawn.

She heard him laugh. Was he looking at her painting?

The deputy stared at her. His puffy eyes reminded her of those on a goldfish she had once swallowed in a drinking bout. “Any strangers?”

“No. Why?”

“No reason. Just checking. There’ve been incidents. Some serious.” He squinted. “There’s a lot of craziness hereabouts.”

“Is there something else?” she asked. “What incidents?”

He puckered his lips and shook his head. “Just checking.” He moved, a thought occurring. “What kind of firearm do you keep handy?”

The sheriff came out of the shack. “It’s not a place a man in his right mind would want to be. At least not by himself. But there’s an old mattress in there, been used not so long ago.” He held up a limp condom. “Your husband know anybody but you?”

She turned away.

“No offence. Just checking. You the painter? Or is he the culprit?”

She narrowed her eyes.

He grinned. “We remember your husband. He was stationed up here, when there used to be somewhere up here to get stationed. He had a few friends. Some of those people who live in the woods and only come out at night. They have more power now hereabouts than they did then.”

They stood by the squad car, talking in low voices, smirking, sharing a joke, the sheriff’s hard, creased face icy with gallows humor. The deputy pointed to her, one index finger cocked like a gun. The sheriff tipped his hat and hitched up his pants. “We’ll check on you now,” he called across the yard. “You’re a ways from people. You let us know if he shows up.”

She didn’t know what to do, where to look. Once they left, she stood in the windswept yard, near a small patch of garden where something was trying to grow. She walked over to the stalk and tugged.

She couldn’t drive: The broken car, covered with its plastic tarp, was parked near the house, looming like a prehistoric worship stone.

“It’s all a fraud,” she said, startling herself. She would leave the painting where it was. That part of her life was over. Even the passionate rhythms of sex, insatiable physical desire, had grown oppressive. Out here, McGaw had turned into something she wanted to push away quick.

“Goodbye then,” she said aloud. She packed a bag. Sadness overwhelmed her. She would find her way back to Fargo and start from square one. Or head for Tulsa. Or the Southwest, where she knew a guy who could get her work, if she arranged for an unblemished ID, as a border guard. She was at the kitchen table, writing McGaw a note, when he rushed into the house.

“I was after her. I found her!” His eyes were bright, feverish. “She spoke to me. She had a lot to say!” He staggered about the room, limping, favoring his right ankle. “Something happened to my ankle. I didn’t bruise it, it didn’t get twisted, it just started hurting!”

She clutched the end of the table, its cold metal fluting.

“She was that close,” he said, holding his hands a foot apart. “Then she disappeared. Let’s use that old sailboat down the beach.” He tore at a loaf of bread, a block of cheese. “You know that glow? It’s not a candle, a flashlight. It’s some kind of bacteria, like Day-Glo paint. Under her skin!” He gulped down milk. “I came to get you. I need help.”

“No. I’m going back.”

“Going back?” He folded his arms. A primitive mask of rage engraved itself on his features. It brought to mind the man who’d beat her. The one she’d killed. “You’re staying. If you’re not here when I get back, I swear I’ll find you.” He tilted against the door. “I could kill you, you know that?”

She felt her fists clench. “Yeah? You and who else?” She felt tears come.

“Your marvelous genius,” he said. “Why don’t we go pay your genius a visit?”

“You must be crazy,” she said. She forced her fingers to relax. “You must be out of your mind. What’s wrong with you? Are you using?”

“Oh, come off it,” he said, waving a hand in dismissal. He smiled. Ingratiating. “It’s just a way of talking. Anyway, I’ve heard you say it—that time in Fargo they had the music so loud? ‘I wish I had a gun,’ you said. ‘I’d blow their heads off.’”

“That was nothing like what you just did.” Her head felt foggy.

“Come here,” he said. He motioned to her, using a gesture she always associated with intimacy. “Let’s make up.” He motioned again, the gesture even more intimate. “Ava, your daughter; she’s a succubus. I need you there. We’ve got to hurry to the boat. We can save her. You can see her again.”

“No.” She chose her words carefully. “I’ll wait here. I won’t go anywhere.”