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Dix remained silent.

“We had plans, she and I,” Darius continued. “Such plans. Things you’d never understand.” He began pacing back and forth on the porch. “We were going to start a whole new way of life. A whole new generation. A new way for humans to interact with the natural world.”

Darius stopped moving. He stared at Dix.

“You’re going to ruin that child, Dix,” Darius said. “You almost ruined Miranda, but you failed there. Thankfully she had the life she wanted for a while, at least, before Mother Nature reclaimed her. Now you’ll have another shot at ruining a life—her baby’s.”

Dix ignored the insults, refused to take the bait. “Time to go, Darius,” he said. “This is no longer your house.”

“Your house. My house,” Darius said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You and your conventional notions of ownership. None of us owns anything, Dix. Everything’s merely on loan to us. Even our own lives.” Darius stared down at him from his perch on the porch. “Why are you here, Dix? It’s not your house, either. It’s Sally’s house again, right? Where is she, anyway? Where’d she run off to? Did you two come here looking for some piece of Miranda? Trying to find forgiveness for what you did, for your part in the mess you made? For ravaging her life? For ruining mine?”

Dix hung his head and shook it slowly back and forth in disgust. When he looked up, Darius was holding a brown paper grocery bag.

“I have a surprise for you, Dix,” Darius said. “I found this in Sally’s room. Who knew that sour bitch could be so sentimental?” He reached into the bag and came up with a fistful of golden corn silk. He tossed it high overhead. Dix looked at the strands quivering in the air as they caught the long rays of afternoon sunlight. Not corn silk, no. Hair. Human hair. Miranda’s hair, freed from her head. Golden strands drifted down toward Dix, settled across his shoulders, mingled with his own hair, tickled the tops of his cheeks. Darius threw more into the space between them.

“Here she is, Dix. Here she is!” he sang out.

There was so much of it. Such beautiful hair.

“This is all that’s left of her,” Darius taunted him. “Take it, Dix. You’ve taken everything else! Her life is over. So is mine. There’s nothing left for you to destroy, you bastard. You bastard!”

Dix closed his eyes. This was the hair he had run his fingers through when he tried to comfort Miranda, the hair he had felt thrown over his bare back when she curled against him in the night. This was the hair he had twisted in his palm when he had penetrated her, trying to make the baby that he’d waited for and who was now waiting for him in a foster home. The hair was dead. Miranda was dead. Dix felt fully free of her. A whole new life, an actual life, the life contained in his daughter, was waiting for him.

When he opened his eyes again, Darius was there on the porch, legs braced in a wide
V
, staring at him. It was an expression Dix had never seen before, empty of everything other than conviction. The brown bag had been tossed aside. There was something different in Darius’s hand now, something small and dark.

Of course there was. Darius was all about the grand gesture. He’d want to go out in a big way. Dix crouched, ready to duck or dive away. But Darius didn’t point the small, dark thing at him. Darius’s arm went up, up, and then bent as he pointed the gun in his hand to his own temple.

Dix bolted then, his boots pushing and slipping against the gravel, Miranda’s hair swirling in his face. He ran not away from Darius but toward him. He pumped his arms and flung himself across the porch steps just as an explosion of sound deafened him. He crashed to the porch, his limbs entangled with those of the man beneath him.

The impact blackened Dix’s world. Sound came back as the first sensation, but all he heard was an intense ringing in his ears. He wondered how long he’d been out. Feeling returned more slowly, a severe stinging in his arm, and a warm, wet puddle between his fingers where they were jammed against the floorboards, pinned beneath something heavy. There was hair in his mouth and eyes. Not his own. Not Miranda’s. Dix looked past the dark brown ropes stuffed in his face. He saw brown, aged wood. The porch. He heard a groan. Not his own. The body beneath him began to squirm. He heard his name spoken in a familiar voice. Then, the sound of a car barreling and bouncing up the drive. Skidding to a stop. He turned his face toward the swirl of pulsating red-and-blue lights. A booted foot landed near his head. Muffled, hurried voices. A hand on his arm.

It’s over,
he thought.
It’s over.

Sally visited Dix in the hospital every day. At first, they told her she wasn’t allowed. Family only. She told them he didn’t have any. She brought paperwork on the case and told them she was his social worker. They shook their heads at her. She came back with Warren. They let her in.

Dix was sedated. She watched him sleep. She watched the steady blips on the machines. The doctors told her he was going to be fine, but he’d lost a lot of blood. The bullet had gone through his arm, and there was a chance he’d lose some of its function. She sat and waited for Dix to wake up and felt something she’d never felt before. Fear. Fear she’d done the wrong thing somehow, that she could have, should have, handled this whole thing differently, that she had caused him irreparable damage. Irrational fear that he’d blame her, hate her for the whole mess. Fear she’d lose him. Fear over the many different forms that loss could take.

Then, on the fourth day, she walked in and he was sitting up in bed, talking to Warren. He looked at her. He smiled. He patted the edge of his bed, motioning her to sit. She gratefully lowered herself to his mattress. They talked about the baby. She was doing fine in foster care. They’d take care of her for as long as he needed to recover, Sally assured him. They didn’t mention Darius. Dix asked Sally how she’d called the cops that day out there at her grandmother’s farmhouse. She reminded him of the small spot of cell-phone reception Phoenix had found. Dix thanked her for saving his life, his daughter’s life. Sally shrugged and looked away, thinking of Miranda, wishing she could have saved her, too. Dix sighed. She asked if he was tired. He nodded. She’d said she’d come visit again. He thanked her for coming, not knowing how many days and hours she’d already spent there at his bedside. She squeezed his hand and left him to sleep and heal. Then, out in the sterile and desolate hallway, she did something else unusual for her. She cried. She cried and cried, releasing the pent-up tears of a long-held worry finally relieved.

It was a crisp fall day, the green leaves changed almost fully to red, orange, yellow, and brown, the air tinged with the taste of winter’s chill, as Dix stood at his back door, waiting. A late-model sedan came slowly up the drive. Aline stepped from the car and handed Dix a small bag holding the very few things his daughter was bringing with her. Dix set the bag on the porch. Aline freed the child from the constraints of her car seat and carried her to Dix. Aline tried to transfer the baby to him, but the moment proved awkward. His arm was still weak and his daughter was shy. She held on to Aline, buried her face in her shoulder. Dix was nothing to her. He knew this. He knew it would take time. But he was not above wishing for a miracle of filial recognition.

Dix and Aline waited. The baby did not budge. Dix held up a finger, silently asking Aline to wait a moment, then walked back to the house and let Lucky outdoors. When Aline peeled the little girl from her shoulder and directed her attention to the dog, she squealed with delight and wriggled to get free. Aline set her down on the lawn. Lucky sniffed at the new creature and then gave her hand a few tentative licks. The girl giggled and patted the dog, who immediately flopped down next to her and rolled over to show the baby her belly. Aline waved at Dix and scuttled away, leaving Dix looking at the child at his feet and feeling a wave of nausea and loneliness. He swallowed it down.

“Lucky,” he said, kneeling next to her in the grass.

Dix’s daughter looked at him, her eyes suspicious and inquisitive. They were Miranda’s in shape and color but deeper, darker in expression. Already.

“Lucky,” he said again, passing his hand over the dog.

The girl tried to say something, some garbled sound that was a complete mangling of the dog’s name. And yet, an effort to copy him. He hoped, anyway.

“Yes,” Dix said. “Yes, that’s it. Lucky.”

And he thought,
Yes, lucky indeed. Lucky we have been, and lucky we’ll need to be.

Activity helped Dix get through that first afternoon and evening. There were toys to play with and exploring the house and yard and feedings and bath and then, thankfully, bedtime. He laid his baby in her new crib, among her new sheets, and she was asleep before he had time to arrange the blankets. He backed out of her room.

Now he had no idea what to do with himself. Fears and worries pursued him through the house. He wished he’d gotten a nanny. He berated himself for trying to do this alone. He was also deeply relieved no one was there to see him struggle.

What if she got sick? What if she’s already sick, some nasty disease swirling in her bloodstream?

He paced and paced and then he heard a whine and stopped pacing. It had come from Lucky. She was lying across the threshold to the baby’s room. Dix joined her there. He stood in the doorway for a few moments and listened to his daughter’s small, puffing breaths. Then he stepped into her room and watched her sleep. He looked at the fawn lashes where they rested on her cheeks, the curlicue of cartilage that was her ear, the line where her flesh turned deep pink and became her lips. She was beautiful. She was real, alive, healthy. Here. He wanted to touch her, but she seemed suddenly a forbidden museum piece.

The phone rang then. The sound, breaking into the evening quiet, shocked him. He stumbled over the dog as he ran to try and stop the sound more than to actually discover who was calling. The harsh noise stopped. The baby didn’t cry. Dix sighed hello into the phone. It was Sally, checking in. Wanted to know how Day One had gone. The depth of his relief at the sound of her familiar voice was so complete, he almost collapsed under the release of it all.

“She’s here. She’s sleeping,” he whispered.

They spoke a little, he told her about how strange and wonderful and awkward it had all been, and then they sat together in silence, listening to each other breathe into the phone.

“I know you said you didn’t want to name her until she was home,” Sally said. “Have you chosen something?”

“Colden.”

“After the mountain.”

“And the lake. One of the prettiest of the High Peaks.”

“Colden Macomb. It’s perfect. I’m happy for you,” Sally said. “I’m sure you’ll take her there someday.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” Dix said.

They said quiet good-byes. Promised to stay in touch. Dix slid to the floor, his back against a kitchen cabinet. His ribs ached. His arm throbbed. He was afraid to go to sleep. Afraid he’d wake the next morning and Colden would be gone, disappeared as miraculously as she’d arrived. He wished Sally was there. No, he wanted to be alone. He wished everything had turned out differently. No, it was perfect for him to do this on his own. He was angry at how everything had turned out. He was grateful it had turned out at all. He gave in to the emotions pinging in his chest and allowed tears to drip like heavy dew from his eyelashes.

He heard movement from Colden’s room. He ran the back of his hand over his eyes, scrambled to his feet, and went to her bedside. Her soft, sweet face was twisted and red, her hands balled into tiny fists. She turned her head back and forth on her chubby neck and whimpered.
She’s having a bad dream,
Dix thought. He feared it was about him. She quieted down for a moment. Then her face flamed again and her mouth stretched open in a silent cry. Dix reached into the crib, his hands splayed above his baby like gnarled roots. He waited, hoping she’d settle herself. Instead, she started crying the frustrated sobs of disturbed sleep and strange visions that will not resolve themselves to wakefulness. Dix dropped his hands, wrapped them around her body, and lifted her from the crib. She squirmed like a cat that did not want to be held. He held on, spread his fingers against her back, tucked her in the crook of his good arm, and coaxed her head against his shoulder. Lucky paced and whimpered at his feet. Dix felt Colden twist back and forth until her hand found her mouth. He felt her breath heave once or twice in her chest. Then her full weight slowly descended against his body. She pushed against his sore ribs. His bent arm protested in pain. He ignored his body’s complaints and walked back and forth in the room, just three steps for his long legs each way. Colden’s small tears came through his T-shirt, warm, wet spots against his skin.