Daniel's voice roughened. "Sometimes. Which was unfair. You can't notice a fire someone is actively hiding behind drywall."
Elise nodded at the glass. "That answer helps more than a prettier one would."
They spent the afternoon teaching Toby to identify animal tracks in the snow behind the cabin — rabbit, deer, something that might have been fox. Daniel knelt in the drift and traced a print with his gloved finger while Toby leaned on his shoulder. Elise took a photograph on her phone and then did not post it anywhere. Privacy, she was learning, could be a kindness when it was chosen rather than imposed.
That night the power flickered during a wind gust, and for twenty seconds the cabin belonged only to the fire. Toby squealed with delighted fear. Daniel lit the emergency lantern from the hall closet. In the orange and white double light, Elise saw the room as a stranger might — wood beams, stone fireplace, plaid blankets, sectional sofa, a family arranged inside a brochure photograph while carrying private weather. When the lights returned, Toby demanded marshmallows, and they made them on forks with the solemnity of a ritual.
After Toby slept, Elise said, "Tell me about the day you took the bag from her closet."
Daniel did not want to. He told her anyway.
He had parked two streets over. Walked. Used the key Natalie had pressed into his palm in the diner, the one on a blue plastic fob shaped like a tiny bear. The house had smelled like Greg's coffee and Natalie's citrus cleaner. Daniel had moved quickly, heart loud, ashamed of the stealth and committed to it. In the closet, behind the suitcase, the coral bag had waited like a held breath. He had also taken, on impulse, a sweater of Natalie's he later gave to their mother, claiming he found it in his own coat closet from a prior visit. That small lie still bothered him. He had walked out the back, through the gate, down the alley. Greg's car had turned onto the street as Daniel reached his own. They had not seen each other. Daniel had sat in the driver's seat with the bag on the floorboard and shaken until his teeth clicked.
"I hated myself," he said. "And I also knew that if I walked the bag back inside, Natalie would be rewritten by a man who had already begun the rewriting."