Morning came. Gray daylight swam through the glass panes of the windows. Jack sat in the kitchen bathed in a new sense of relieved happiness. His mother was making breakfast, Kyle was off somewhere else in the house—but across the table from Jack sat his father; Mr. Kemper had returned. Jack spoke to his father of all the unimportant and yet so meaningful things as the smells of syrup and hot bacon curled throughout the kitchen. Where the man had been didn't really seem to matter. All the days of his absence folded in half, and then in half again, and then again, until the time he'd not been there felt nonexistent. Nothing had changed. No consequential events had passed. Of course, Jack knew in the back of his mind that that was not true—many things had happened, and they were things that couldn't be ignored for much longer than a morning of beautiful smells and conversations. But the bleak, heavy matrix that had consumed the house had been punctured by Mr. Kemper's return; Jack sensed that. It wasn't gone, by any means. Even as he kept his eyes on his father across the table from him, watched the air glitter with occasional pinpricks of light, felt the atmosphere in the kitchen lighten, he knew, too, that beyond the presence of his father and clearly happier mother, the darkness lay still. It was somewhat shaken, somewhat weakened by the reappearance of the part of foundation it had assumed was gone for good. Jack knew it was still there but knew, too, that it had been penetrated, and that left an opening for him to build on.

If Kyle was happy or even surprised to see his father, he didn't show it. He showed no emotion whatsoever, just stayed in his room. Jack knew their father went up there to talk with his twin, but what they said, he didn't know. And Kyle wouldn't discuss it with Jack; the two of them never spoke to one another anymore.

When Grace Maloney knocked on the front door around two-thirty in the afternoon, Jack was hardly ready to leave the presence of his father in order to go outside with her, but he nevertheless left the house and sat on the front porch, where he and Grace talked of the amazing thing that had occurred. The piece of rightness that had been restored.

"Where do you think he was, all this time?" asked Grace; she wasn't one for wasting time with her words.

Jack shrugged, picked at a piece of dead grass, stared into space. "I don't know, but I don't really care. I'm just glad he's back."

"What do you mean, you don't care?" Grace seemed incredulous. "It might have been somewhere important—somewhere that actually might mean something to what's going on . . ."

"Nah, I don't think so." Jack really didn't want to think about where his father had been. All he knew was that he'd returned. In fact, it didn't quite feel as if the man had been anywhere at all—more that he'd been nowhere. Like he'd just stopped existing for the time he'd been gone. That was easier for Jack to comprehend than the thought that he'd been somewhere physical all that while.

Grace was contemplative. "Well, I guess if that's what you think. I mean, he's your dad. Not mine. I don't even know who my real dad is, but I call my step-dad my real dad, because that's what he seems like to me." She stubbed her toe at a crack in the cement. "Have you thought about what to do now? Since he's home, I mean? What next? Do you think it will just fix everything? I mean—"

She would have gone on except she saw Jack shaking his head very definitively, which discouraged her from continuing. "No," he affirmed. "Kyle didn't even really notice him come back. He's . . . he's too far away from us, right now. Too far from me, especially. I don't know how to bring him back. My dad can help my mom get better. But I don't think he can help Kyle. I don't know if anyone can, because the only way he'll be happy is if his legs work again, and . . . and that just . . . it's not something I can do."

Sighing like she was trying to get all the breath out of her at once, Grace clicked her tongue. "I don't know what to tell you, Jack. I mean, there's just really nothing I can do except be here if you wanna talk. That's about it, really. But I don't know what to tell you about your brother, because I think you're right."

"Then why did Miss Collins try to tell me I could do this?"

Grace picked up on the anger in his voice. Defensive, she said, "Now wait, don't get mad at Anne. She knows what she's talking about, I believe. I mean, she's been through this all before, so she knows a lot more than either you or me."

"But what happened to her was different than what is happening to me. And to you. Even if we're the same in some ways, we're different, too. She didn't have a brother that just started to hate her and turn away from everything in the world."

"No, you're right. But she did have a friend who did. And he ended up killing himself. Remember her saying that?"

Jack gasped, as if he'd just thought of something. "Do you think Kyle would . . . I mean . . . like her friend?"

"Of course not!" Grace hurriedly assured her friend. "Well, I mean, I guess I wouldn't really know, but it doesn't seem like that to me. I think you're right, that this is a different situation than what Anne had. But still, it's the same, too. I mean, someone who hates everything . . . who gives up on everything . . ."

Jack was shaking his head again, although slower this time, more contemplatively. "I don't know, Grace. I just . . . I don't know." He watched as a tiny piece of dark crept from underneath the porch and rolled into a larger patch of shadow resting on the lawn, which then split off into chunks and faded away.

The wind picked up, reddening the chilled cheeks of the boy and girl on the stoop. Jack felt suddenly alone again; the joy of his father's return had been overshadowed with the realization that, in spite of it, there was still little he could do. Kyle was the root of the desolation, he knew, and even if his mother and father were happy again at the moment, it wouldn't last long. Kyle's hollowness would consume them eventually. It was too big, too deep. It would spread. Seep into every little part of their lives, until they were as empty and bitter as it. Until their house and the people in it were sucked into oblivion and left with pure nothing. The threat was still real, and it was still there. What made it worse was that his parents wouldn't realize they were in danger. They'd think everything was going to get better; everything would work itself out, now that they were together again. But Jack knew differently. He had actually witnessed what Kyle had created, and he knew that it was too big for his parents to handle, even if they did know it was there.

He sighed so loud Grace turned to look at him. "You ok?" she asked.

Jack didn't even know how to respond. Didn't want to, all of a sudden. He suddenly felt like it would be a pain to continue this conversation. Like it would hurt to go on any more. He just wanted to be alone.

Rising, Jack said to Grace, "I should probably be getting back inside. You know, be with my dad. See if I can think of what to do now."

Clearly, Grace wasn't buying his casual act. She got up from her sitting position and stood, a good two inches taller than him, looking into Jack's dark eyes. "I'm sorry. I am. Please call me for any reason, ok?"

Jack just stared at the lawn. It seemed as if the little shadows were seeping upward through the snow, gathering on top of the crunchy crust of white covering the lawn. It was kind of like they were watching him—waiting for his response to Grace. Like they knew he was stuck, and he bet if they could've communicated with him, they would've been laughing. He hated them for it. Hated them.

Giving a nod of his head just to satisfy Grace, the boy turned away from her and went into the house, feeling a new sense of defeat. One that was, perhaps, more upsetting than the previous, because he knew his father wouldn't really be able to fix much at all.