“But I’m cold when I sleep.”

“Isn’t your mother sleeping with you? She said she would.”

“Yes, but she doesn’t keep me warm. She doesn’t like me to touch her.”

“Of course she does.”

“No, she pulls away when I reach for her foot.”

“Maybe she’s just asleep.”

“No, she’s awake. She’s doing it on purpose.”

“Agnes, I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s true. She doesn’t want to be with me. She doesn’t like me.” Agnes felt a surge of pressure in her chest, as though she might sputter into coughs. Her eyes watered.

“Your mother loves you very much. Everything she does, she does for you.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s mostly true.”

“She does a lot for herself.”

“Don’t you?”

Agnes thought that counterpoint was unfair. She wasn’t someone’s mom. But she didn’t say that. “You don’t,” she said.

“Sure I do.”

“No, you don’t, and you certainly wouldn’t if you had your own kids.”

“Oh,” Glen said and frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“I thought I had my own kid. She’s this funny little girl who says dumb things sometimes. Like how her dad doesn’t have any kids.”

“You know what I mean. You’re not my actual dad.”

“I feel like I am,” he said.

“I know. I just was thinking about Madeline.”

Glen looked slapped. “Oh.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s nice to hear her name. I didn’t know you knew it.”

“I do.”

“Did your mother tell you?”

“No.”

“But you heard it.”

“Yes.”

Glen smiled. “You hear everything, don’t you?”

Agnes smiled and bowed her head proudly. “It’s my job.”

“No,” he said, frowning again. “Your job is to be young.”

“I’m sorry I said her name.”

He chuckled. “You can say her name. It’s nice to hear it—I wasn’t lying.” He smiled. “I don’t talk about her because she’s not here. And you are. And you’re my girl. But if she were here, I would treat Madeline like I treat you. Like your mother treats you.”

“Hmm,” said Agnes. She was unconvinced.

In front of them a pair of amber eyes blinked near to the ground.

“Mouse or mole or vole or troll?” Glen said.

“Troll,” Agnes said.

“That’s what I thought too. Scoot, troll,” he said, and the creature scampered away. Glen coughed. Then said, “Sometimes I feel bad for keeping you here. I think maybe we should have left when you got better.”

“Don’t.” Agnes said this forcefully.

“Oh?”

Agnes wanted to say more, but she found that when she opened her mouth to speak, she only choked on a rising feeling. She looked around at the black sky, the near-invisible line of the horizon. She listened to the bats clicking their whereabouts and finding her. The breeze cooled her skin after such a hot day. Sitting alone next to Glen, her dad, in the open air among the animals and the Community. Who would she even be now if they hadn’t come here?

“I never want to leave,” she said.

Glen pulled her close and kissed her forehead. “I know you don’t,” he said, still frowning.

“Will you please come back to camp?” Agnes said. “I’m lonely at night.”

“But your mother.”

“She’ll go sleep with Carl. It’s where she wants to be anyway.” Agnes flinched a bit at having said such a thing to Glen. It was cruel.

But Glen laughed, a reedy empty laugh. “Oh, Agnes. What you don’t know about your mother could fill a canyon.”

“I know more than you think.”

“Oh?”

“I know that she thinks she is protecting us.”

“But . . . ?” Glen asked.

“I don’t need her to protect me. And neither do you. Even if we needed help, there are other ways.”

“Your mother knows what she’s doing. And I know what she’s doing. We’re a team.”

“How can you say that when she’s with Carl?”

Glen’s voice became slow and emphatic. “I know what she’s doing,” he said again, trying to make it true. “She knows what she’s doing. We’re a team.”

Agnes looked at Glen. “You’re a fool,” she said quietly. Though she knew it was unkind, she could think of no other way to say it.

Glen blinked. Agnes thought his eyes got wet for a moment, but nothing escaped them. “Maybe,” he said.

They were quiet. A ground owl filled in the blanks. A cloud rushed to hide the moon. Agnes shivered.

Glen stretched dramatically, then slapped his thighs. “But,” he said loudly, with forced cheer, “to answer your question, yes, I will come back to the sleep circle. My feet were getting awfully cold out here.”

Agnes smiled. She helped him up, noticing the way his knees trembled. But he steadied himself without her help. She gathered his bedding, and they walked. She felt like she was the youngest member of a herd and he was the eldest, the most important. She knew no one else thought of him that way, but she felt proud beside him. She didn’t think he needed to be the leader to still be important, though she understood that wasn’t the way of the herd. She threw his pelts over her shoulder to free her hand, which she slipped into his.

Agnes smiled as they walked and kept her smile even when she noticed her mother watching them approach, her face pinched and disapproving. As they got to the edge of camp, Bea rose from her seat and went to the bed she’d been sharing with Agnes. She picked up her own pelt just as they arrived at the family’s spot in the circle. She gave Agnes a tight smile. Agnes tried to mirror it, to mock her mother. But instead of feeling mocked, Agnes thought she saw a laugh behind her mother’s eyes. Her mother did not acknowledge Glen. She walked over to where Carl was lounging and put her skins down with his.

Agnes looked up at Glen and was surprised to see he was not watching her mother walk away. He was smiling down at Agnes. He pinched her cheek.

“It’s bedtime. Ready, Freddy?” he asked.

“My name’s not Freddy,” she said.

“It isn’t?” He scratched his head. “I could have sworn . . .” It was a thing he used to say to her whenever they were preparing to leave the apartment. Back so long ago when she was a little girl and he was her mother’s boyfriend and they were about to step into the harsh, crowded world outside their cozy home.

*

As the Community ate their supper and the horizon devoured the sun, Agnes’s hackles rose. She looked around the fire and saw that most of the others were still, alert, listening. Each of their heads whipped toward the sound of a single crunch.

They peered into the growing dusk. Agnes saw the shadow of a man, shoulders hunched. It looked as though his hands were thrust into pockets. But his details were lost in the murky light and sage surrounding him.

“Who the hell are you?” Carl yelled at the shadow.

The shadow flinched, lowered himself into a cowering pose. His hair caught the sun’s thrown blazes of red.

“Fuck off,” Carl yelled.

The shadow loped away, looking back every few paces, the sad whites of his eyes shining, his tongue drooping from his mouth.

“He needs water,” Debra said.

“We need water,” Carl said.

“We have water.” Debra looked at Bea.

Bea said, “No water.”

The Community pretended to turn attention again to the fire, where the flames rioted. They kept their hands on their primitive weapons.

“Juan and I will keep watch till morning,” said Carl. The shadow retreated and was not sensed again that night.

The next day the Community was on edge, everyone disrupting their work to scan the horizon for a return of the slinking shadow.

The next night it came. This time closer and more reminiscent of a man. A man with the kind of mangy beard found on corpses. Like the dead man on the ridge and his dead beard. Brad’s uncle. Agnes sneered at the memory. This man in front of them wore madras shorts and thin-soled City shoes. A water tube slung around his torso, deflated, empty. He knelt. He thrust his hands out, palms upraised. His eyes were low and averted.

“He needs water,” Debra said.

“We need water,” Carl said.

“We have water,” Debra said. She looked to Bea again.

Bea sighed. She flicked her hand. “Give him a cup of water.”

Carl punched his hand against his thigh, his lips tight and bloodless. But he stood up and found a wooden cup that had been tossed into the dirt. Without brushing it off, he filled it with water and walked it away from the fire, not toward the man but far to his right, to make the man have to crawl to get it.

The Community turned their attention back to the fire. They heard rustling, the grunt of exertion. They heard a slurp, a gasp, a cough. Then they heard nothing. When they bedded down, they assumed he bedded down as well, right where he’d drunk the water. Frank and Linda patrolled that night.

In the earliest part of morning, they woke to a shriek. Debra’s. She was standing, a pelt clutched around her. The man in the madras shorts was in her bed, curled up like a pill bug. His eyes bulged and his muscles tensed in preparation for an escape, though he didn’t move.

“Okay, that’s it,” Carl said. “Get up.”

“I’m sorry,” the man said into his hands.

“Get up.”

“I was cold,” the man said from the ground.