The stairs went on and on. The water pushed its way into Danny’s ears, his eyes, his lungs. But finally, near the earth’s molten core, the stairs ran out. When Danny looked up, the top of the pool was the size of a dime, a dime of blue sky. And then Danny saw a door (Phase Nine) and opened it. He was in a white hall. The water was gone. The walls were smooth, no windows or doors or decorations. All Danny saw was a gray-blue endpoint that looked like another door, and he walked down the hall toward that. It was a long walk, but when he finally got close to the door he realized it wasn’t a door, it was a window. Danny couldn’t see through it—the glass was foggy or dusty or maybe just warped. But when he got to the window and put his hand against it, the glass suddenly cleared (Phase Ten). I saw him standing there. And he saw me.

Where the fuck did you come from? I said.

Danny smiled. He said: You didn’t really think I was going to leave you alone?

He said: Haven’t you learned that the thing you want to forget most is the one that’ll never leave you?

He said: Let the haunting begin. And then he laughed.

He said: We’re twins. There’s no separating us.

He said: I hope you like to write.

And then he started to talk, whispering in my ear.

Underneath me, Davis lay on his tray with the orange radio pushed up against his head. His eyes were shut. He turned the knobs, listening.

Seth gets to the door and I can see he’s still tweaking but slowing down. He’s been gone two days, which is usually what happens after he finishes a job. For a construction worker he’s emaciated, and without his dentures in there’s not a tooth in his head. And this was a rock star, not just locally but in other states. Onstage he’d take off his shirt and girls would throw their beer to see it run down his chest.

I leaned over Gabby and put my face in her long, heavy hair, which is jet black and smells like apples. There’s a sweetness still in Gabby that Megan lost years ago. Every day I feel like I’m holding myself around that sweetness, trying to protect it.

Our baby, Corey, was red and very small, about the size of a hand. He looked scalded. You could see he shouldn’t be out in the world. Can’t we put him back? I asked that question several times. Isn’t there a way to put him back? No one even answered me.

He had a tight little face, a shrunken face like a mummy dug up after centuries. The pain of thousands of years was in it.

I would sit there, watching him through the glass. He moved like a boiled hand, opening and closing weakly. “We need to turn him,” the nurses would tell me, and I’d move away.

I only took a bump when I couldn’t move or care for the other two without it. I’d think, Just a little one, just enough to get them to school, and I’d take the bump and feel the baby clench up in me.

After Corey died, I was in a psychiatric hospital for months. I just want to die, I’d say, and they’d tell me, You have two girls who need you. And you’re clean, you’ve kicked your habit and your whole life is still ahead of you.

I told my mother, “The doctors say I have to forgive myself or I can’t go on. So I’m trying to do that.” And my mother said, “Forgiving yourself is one thing. Getting God to forgive you is something else.”

I got to my class the first night and there they were: the trash. Looking huge at their desks. Most of them seemed edgy, curious, but not Ray Dobbs. He was lean, with thick dark hair. Handsome. But his blue eyes were dead.

I gave him an assignment: Write a story three pages long. And he came back the next week and read out the vilest shit about fucking his teacher. All of them were howling and I was really scared, knowing if I lost control of the class there’d be no getting it back. And that gave me an adrenaline surge that was the tiniest bit like getting high.

So I started to talk. And as Ray Dobbs listened to me I saw something open up behind his eyes like a camera shutter when the picture shoots. It made goose bumps rise up all over me because I’d done that; I’d made that happen just by talking. It felt intimate, like something physical between us.

After that I could feel Ray watching me. It made me alert, like someone had scrubbed mint all over my skin. I’d walk into that stinking, miserable prison and for the next three hours, a wise and beautiful woman would float out of the wreckage of my life, and her words and thoughts and tiniest movements were precious.

My first mistake was being in a hurry. I grabbed for what was in front of me: marrying Seth the rock star, having a child—I’d always been special and I thought the specialness would still be there no matter what, but this other stuff might not.

And by the time I saw how really bad things were—Seth fighting with his band, disappearing for days while I scrambled to take care of two kids—by the time I realized what a pit I’d fallen into, it was too late. I had two little girls, a husband who was smoking meth, and one year of community college. I still lived twenty minutes from where I grew up.

I smoked my first pipe with Seth. I knew the stuff was bad, but I was so tired of being the cop, begging and raging at him, throwing Pampers in his face when he walked in the door. I wanted to be on the same side again. So I smoked with Seth one afternoon when the girls were napping, and oh my God, I can only think about this for a minute or every part of me will turn into a mouth wanting more: the sexiness of it, fucking Seth like wild for the first time in months, going on even when the girls started to whimper and bang on the door. Then looking out the window and seeing the world shake itself to life: the heavy trees, the sky. And I was back on top. We were going to make it, Seth and I. The voice in my head was back again, telling me stories, too many to write down or even tell one from another.

“Ray,” I whisper.

No sound. The logs shift in the fireplace.

“Ray.”

I go to the door and open it, then the second door. I look down the outdoor stairs and over the trees at the horizon. “Ray,” I call, but the wind has come up and it blows my voice to pieces.

“Ray! Ray! Ray!” Suddenly I’m hollering, because he has to be here. He must be; otherwise I’ve spent all that money and left my girls and come all this way for nothing.

I call his name until my voice gets weak. I go back inside the keep and lie down on the brocade couch. I’m overwhelmed by the purest sadness I can remember in my life—not like Corey, where the sadness was mixed up with guilt, responsibility—this is just loss. Pure loss. I know Ray is gone, and I’ll never see him again.

In the cabana, an older lady gives me a black one-piece swimming suit and a thick terry-cloth robe. There are private changing cubicles with canvas walls and full-length mirrors. I watch myself change into the swimsuit. Thirty-three years of wear and tear, but there I am.

When I come back out, it’s dark except for the big green circle of swimming pool. The cold bites at my fingers and calves and feet. I stand there listening, because a new sound has started up, like thousands of tiny glass pieces breaking above and below and all around me. I turn my face to the sky and then I feel it, bits of cold on my face: snow. In the total quiet of this place, I can hear snow falling through the air and landing on the marble. A trillion invisible clicks.

The steam on the pool is thicker now, like spinning bales of white hay. I can barely see the people underneath it.

And I don’t know if it’s the snow, or the night, or that pale green water, or something else that’s separate from all that, but as I walk to the edge of the pool I’m filled with an old, childish excitement. I wait, letting the snow fall and melt on my hair and face and feet. I let the excitement build until it floods my chest.

I close my eyes and dive in.