Claire went downstairs for a glass of water. Her head was throbbing. She should have gone to her mother, but it was Elv she wanted. As she went down the hall she heard people talking, a murmur, as if a radio had been left on. A muffled laugh pealed, then dissolved. Things looked different in the dark. The hallway seemed longer. A pale glow was cast by the moonlight coming in through the windows in the living room. It pooled on the hallway carpet like puddles of milk. Elv always locked her door, but she’d shown Claire how to get in. Only for emergencies, Elv had said. Reuna malin, she whispered. Reuna malin, Claire echoed.

She should have rescued Elv from Westfield. Elv had officially forgiven her, but Claire often couldn’t sleep, kept awake by her shame. She rewound that day in New Hampshire inside her head. The way those men had grabbed Elv, the red leaves fluttering down like birds. She kept thinking about how Elv had opened the car door and run and kept running without looking back. Claire would never get back to sleep tonight. She was burning up, the way she had been when there’d been the heat wave and her arms were in casts and she had to sleep all alone in the attic while her sisters went to France. She still wanted that black painting of the river. She wondered if Elv had it, or if she’d thrown it away.

Elv kept a key under the hallway carpet. Claire bent to retrieve it. She thought she might faint. It was definitely an emergency.

Long before the rain began, Lorry had climbed through the window. He’d been to their house a dozen times or more with no one the wiser. That’s what he did, after all. He was a thief, and he was good at it. All fall, Elv had been going to meet him in Astoria, at a basement apartment Michael had rented before he’d been picked up again for auto theft. He’d been sent to Rikers this time. Now that he was eighteen he had been tried as an adult. The apartment had been empty for several months, but now Lorry had to relocate. In the meantime, North Point Harbor would have to do. He’d gotten to know the town. It was easy to pull off a robbery. People rarely locked their doors; they left cash and jewelry scattered around. Even the dogs, mostly cheerful golden retrievers and Labradors, seemed happy to greet him.

On this evening he’d arrived at dusk, hastening through the garden, where Elv’s mother used to tell her stories, hands in his pockets. It was drizzling and the green trees loomed. He always wore the same black boots, though they now had holes in the soles, and his black coat. Her family had no idea what went on. Sometimes he was there waiting in her room all through their dinner, his car parked around the curve, past the Weinsteins’ house. It felt illicit and crazy when they had sex in her bed. They wanted to laugh, but were afraid to make noise. He covered her mouth with his when she did laugh. Shh, he told her. Don’t say a word, and she didn’t. Only a few more months, and she’d be his. Then she could shout out loud. They wouldn’t have to slink around or play by anyone else’s rules. He knew he hadn’t lived a perfect, blameless life, but this was different. He was careful not to let her get high too often. There were limits, and he’d been around long enough to know what they were. One of them with a fatal flaw was enough. Not that he didn’t have other flaws as well. Elv being one of them. He couldn’t stay away even though he knew he was risking too much, being with her in her mother’s house when she was underage. He was in love, and people in that condition did stupid, unfathomable things. They were all flawed, every single one.

“Tell me a story,” she whispered in bed. “Tell me about the dog.”

He spoke softly, arms around her. A posse had been formed. They had lanterns, torches, and knives. It didn’t take long for them to find the gang who had killed Mother, his grand watchdog, the mother of all vicious, loyal beasts. The gang responsible was made up of a hodgepodge of thugs who terrorized women and children living underground, demanding protection money from the sick and the weak.

They went after a little girl named Emma, having been contacted by a couple aboveground who would pay two thousand dollars in exchange for a child. Emma was perfect. Her mother brought her to a public school kindergarten every day, waiting on a bench outside until the school day was done. That’s where the unscrupulous couple had first spied her, deciding they wanted her for their own.

On the day of the planned abduction, Lorry and Mother had been passing by the tent where the child and her mother lived. Mother knew evil so well he could smell it. He stopped and bared his teeth. The fur along his back rose up in a ridge. The gang scattered now that Lorry and his dog were on the scene. Still, their intentions were clear; someone had cut through the tent where Emma and her mother lived. Someone was just about to grab her.

As a reward, Lorry and his dog were offered bowls of stew. It was all the woman had to show her gratitude, and on that night it seemed a great gift. Lorry and Mother were both starving.

The death of his dog was payback for thwarting the plan to take the little girl. Well, payback it would be. There were pools of blood when Lorry and his friends were done with the gang, and then a scattering. Two bodies on the track, the worst of the worst. Some things were meant to never be mentioned again, not then and not ever. When those who’d been there on that evening passed each other in the future, they nodded and rarely said more than a few words in greeting, yet they were brothers in some unspoken way. Lorry wrapped up the dog’s body in the only blanket he owned, then carried him outside. He buried the dog in Central Park, not far from the zoo. He wanted his dog to be where snow would rim the ground, where the grass grew. There was a freedom in that, even for the fallen.