Whitewashed slats appear in a pile on the floor. The blur of a bear-sized person hammers and fastens and screws the beams together. They become a rectangle, a box. They become a crib.

“You wanna hear a story, Natalie Cleary?” I nod, and he folds his arms around me. “We live in the same world,” he says softly, slowly. “After school, you get a job teaching over at NKU. I coach a high school team, or maybe middle school. We live in an old house with a big yard, and one day, I talk you into marrying me.” He rests his chin on top of my head. “You wear flowers in your hair at our wedding, and Mason gets so wasted he throws up during his speech, but we’re so happy, we just laugh.”

“You finish my song,” I say.

He shakes his head. “I finished that weeks ago,” he says. “Pick something else.”

I tighten my eyes against the tears, my arms against Beau’s back. “The porch,” I say. “Every night, you and I sit outside until the sun goes down. And a piano. I surprise you with a piano.”

“And you dance whenever I play it.”

“Where?” I ask, laughing.

“In the sunroom, of course,” he whispers.

“Oh, of course. And does time move when you play and I dance?”

His hands enfold my jaw, and he kisses my forehead. “No, Natalie,” he says. “Time doesn’t move. It stands still.”

“We never run out of it,” I say.

Beau looks down at me, thumbs swiping away twin trails of tears on my cheeks. “And it’s enough for you?”

I swallow the painful knot in my throat. “It’s more than enough.”

And for a moment, I let myself believe it’s real. Beau restores this house for me. I come home to him every night, fall asleep, and wake up with my legs tangled with his. I go to all the games he coaches, and watch him kiss our kids goodnight, and someday notice his hand is wrinkly in mine. I’m the one who gets to see every part of him and who watches his softness cover the hard world. Still, we move forward, forward, forward, and for two beats of my heart, I’m sure I see an old, bent woman standing on the porch, looking through the window. Dark hair falls down around her hunched shoulders, and the pink light of early morning splays its fingers out around the crown of her head, silhouetting her face, but I still think I see her barely smile as her hand lifts up and presses against the dew-splotched windowpane. Before I can say a word, Grandmother disappears again, so thoroughly I can’t be sure she was ever there.

“You asked me what I want,” Beau says. I turn back to look up into his face, and into him. His hand comes up to cradle the side of my jaw.

Time slips back into place, and it all goes away. I want it too. I want it so much it hurts.

“You’re wrong, Beau,” I say. “You’re not the atom bomb. You made all this. You made the world.”

The nightmares plague me endlessly. In these, I’m the one driving and Matt’s beside me, where my toddler-sized car seat should be strapped in. Bright headlights flash up over the windshield, making the heavy rain glitter like diamonds for that silent instant before the car goes off the road.

My ears are ringing so much I can’t hear my own screams, and Matt is silent, eyes glazed, yards of tubing coiled in the backseat and stretching into his nostrils. “Matt,” I shriek. “Matty.”

I wake panting, my heart thundering, and when my eyes snap open, my whole body clenches painfully as I see the black orb floating overhead. “No,” I hiss, scooting backward away from it. “No, no. No.”

It’s starting: the end.

The orb drifts toward me, and I tumble out of bed, running to the dresser where my car keys sit. I don’t know what I’m thinking; all I know is I have to get away from that orb. I have to outrun this. I stuff my feet into the boots by the door and flee from the room, circle the house at a sprint, and jump into the Jeep.

“Grandmother,” I’m whispering under my breath. “Don’t let this happen. Don’t let this happen.”

I start the car and back down the long driveway haphazardly, jerking onto the country road beyond.

How do I stop this?

At first I head toward Beau’s, like if I can see him, tangle my fists in his hair and shirt, he can’t be taken from me. The Other Matt can’t be taken from me. Life as I know it can’t be pried from my grip.

But as I near the turnoff for the Presbyterian church, sweat breaks out along my hairline, my hands start shaking against the steering wheel, and I know exactly where I’m going, where I’ve been going this whole time. I pass the church and the high school, and still I keep driving, my mouth dry and heart speeding.

I try to think about nothing. I try to think about anything but my destination and the dread coiling in the lowest part of my stomach or the creeping sensation along my neck. I see it up ahead, and a burst of adrenaline shoots across the back of my tongue, metallic and cold.

Don’t think about it. Don’t go there. Don’t remember it.

I pull off to the shoulder, the headlights lancing over Matt’s memorial, startling me anew. I leave the lights on as I step out of the car, the only illumination besides the red glow of the stoplights strung across the road. It’s an intersection of two narrow country lanes with poor visibility due to the wall of trees on both sides of both streets. It used to be a two-way stop, but they changed it to a four-way and later added the stoplights after one too many accidents happened there.

My accident.

I run to the memorial, feeling all the way as if I’m being chased, hungrily pursued by the black orb, by a closing door trying to shut me out of Beau’s world, and Grandmother’s too.

But this is where it all started. Somehow I know that. Somehow I believe I can stop this.

I drop to my knees in front of the poster, my eyes pushing against the dark. I think about Beau’s hands sweeping over the piano and visualize my movement, but I can’t make the veil inside me drop so I can pass through.

“PLEASE,” I scream into the night. My eyes bounce down the bank to the mostly dry creek bed, my ears tuning in to the trickle of water over stones and the buzz of mosquitoes skating across the surface.

It’s like I’m back in the car, flipping endlessly, stomach lurching, tiny voice screaming as we careen into the water and the windows explode in a fine mist of glass. I find myself gasping for breath, reaching for something to steady myself as there are several sharp tugs at my stomach. When my hand touches the poster but instead finds cool stone, I realize I’ve finally broken through.