But I didn’t dare go upstairs because that’s where Mack and Faith still were, in her room, talking in low murmurs. I didn’t stick around long enough to hear what they were talking about. I didn’t want to know.

“You want to know if your mother could do what you can,” he says.

I turn to find him eyeing me as we wander through the forest with Ivan a silent presence at our back.

“Yes, yes, I do.”

“The answer to that question is, I don’t know. If she could, she never did it in my ...