I cannot feel my feet. I know they are there because I am standing on them, standing on the rocks, but the feeling is gone. The cold has taken it. The cold has come up through the granite and into my bones, and it is eating me from the bottom, like the

sea eats a boat. I am holding ringe against my chest. The dog is warm. The dog is the only

warm thing left in the world. I can feel his heart going fast, faster than mine, and I press him

tighter, and I think, do not bark, do not make a sound,

because somewhere out there, in the snow, in the dark, he is looking for me. I can see the moon.

It is high now, and the rocks are silver where the moonlight touches them, and black where it does not. And I am in the black,

pressed down into a place between two rocks where the seaweed is frozen into stiff brown ropes

beneath me. I am wearing my nightdress and nothing else, no shoes, no coat. I left everything behind when I went through the window.

I left Karen behind. God forgive me. I left my sister behind because she could not move.

She could not stand. The blood was in her eyes, and she was sitting on the floor and she said to me,

I cannot, I cannot. And I heard him coming back on the floor and she said to me, I cannot, I cannot.

And I heard him coming back through the door and I had to choose.

I chose to live.

I heard everything.

I heard the axe.

I heard what he did to Anitha outside,

in the snow by the corner of the house. I was at the window, and I could

see the shape of him, the shape of his arm going up and coming down, and I heard her cry out.

She said his name. She said it three times, Louis, Louis, and then she did not say anything more.

I knew it was him.

I could not see his face in the dark, but I did not need to see his face.

He has eaten at my table.

...