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It still hangs three feet off my floor with its mouth open and one arm reaching. Everything in it is frozen. Maren put half a living thing into a condition that doesn't exist and walked out, and it's been waiting there ever since. To do what?

At six thirty Saturday it faced the sink. This morning it faced the front door.

Now it's facing Maren.

Nobody saw it turn. Sid was looking straight at it.

Maren sets the box down slowly.

"Can you..." Cass starts.

"Yeah. Give me a second."

She raises her hand.

She holds it up long enough that Cass finds something to look at on the floor.

Nothing happens.

"Come on," Maren says, to herself, quiet.

Nothing happens.

Tonight she can't move anything, and I can see it in her shoulders. She's frustrated.

Cass takes her wolves out to the yard without being asked. That's why she's my second.

Sid talks into my head flat, no swagger in it at all.

She isn't empty. Something's sitting on the lid.

Then he goes out the flap after Cass, which he has never done once.

Maren sits down on my third stair, next to the quilt she folded there this morning before she walked out on me.

"You didn't answer about wanting me."

"No."

"Was that because you don't have an answer?"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

The truth is the only thing left in this house.

"You hadn't slept. You had blood dried under your nose. You'd have taken whatever I said because you really needed something to hold on to. I was afraid that then you'd have spent the rest of your life not knowing if you believed me or if you just needed it."

She turns that over. It takes a while.

"Ask me now," I say.

"That's my line."

"I know. Take it."

"Would you still want me if nobody had told you to?" She asks.