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on the slick surface of the leaves.
    Keep running.
    Slamming into the thick-bodied bases of hardwoods, he absorbs the blows, spins and continues. Tripping over fallen branches, felled trees, and cypress knees, he tucks, rolls, and springs, somehow managing to find his feet again and keep moving.
    Eventually the shots stop, but he doesn’t.
    He runs.
    The cold air burns his throat and lungs.
    He keeps running. His heart about to burst, he keeps running.
    He doesn’t stop.
    Exhaustion. Fatigue. Cramps. Shin splints. Twisted ankle. Thirst. Lightheadedness.
    He runs.
    He runs toward the river. It’s less than two miles away … or is supposed to be.
    I should’ve reached it by now. Where is it? Where am I? How’d I get turned around? Why haven’t I found anything?
    Seeing the hollowed-out base of a cypress tree, he collapses into it.
    He doesn’t check for snakes. He just backs in and falls down. A few minutes ago, he was more terrified of snakes, in general, and cottonmouths and rattlers, in particular, than anything else in the entire world. A lot has changed in the last few minutes.
    Attempting to slow his heart and catch his breath, he listens for footsteps, blood bounding through his body so forcefully his eyes feel like they’ll bulge out of his skull.
    F ull moon.
    Freezing.
    Fog.
    Why didn’t you just go back? You had a choice. You knew what you should do and you didn’t do it. You’re gonna die out here and they’ll never find your body. Heather and Mom—
    Mom.
    She’d be expecting him by now. Needing him.
    Having waged a futile war against MS for decades, his mother is now in the final stages of peace talks with this foreign captor of her body. The only terms she can get are complete and unconditional surrender, which she’s nearly ready to give.
    He had promised his dad he’d take care of her, move back to the Panhandle to be with her, and here he is lost in the middle of a cypress swamp on a freezing night, hunted like one of the endangered animals he’s been trying to help.
    Sorry, Dad.
    But it’s not just about letting his dad down again. His mom can’t take care of herself. It’s dangerous for her to be alone. Each evening, he feeds her, helps her with her medications, moves her from recliner to dining table, to bathroom, to bed.
    Will she survive the night? Will I?
    Caroline James had been a truly beautiful woman—the kind people stop to admire. Long before her diagnosis, she had a vulnerability that added to her attractiveness. As her disease progressed, vulnerable beauty became feeble beauty, but beauty nonetheless. It wasn’t until her husband and caretaker abandoned her that the last of her attractiveness wilted.
    As if a physical manifestation of the spiritual withdrawals Cole’s absence produced, Caroline’s body began to wither—drawing in on itself. Curling. Constricting. Clinching.
    Like the petals of a flower closing, the aperture of her allure shut down completely, never to reopen.
    Sitting there in the cold dark, attempting to calm himself, Remington recalls one of their recent conversations.
    —It won’t be long now, she says. Can’t be.
    Shrunken, shriveled, coiled, her small, fetal-like form is lost in the bed that had been big enough for both of them, Cole’s unmade side empty and cold.
    Remington sits next to it in a low, stiff, uncomfortable chair, pulled up from the corner of the room where its only job is to tie together the carpet, comforter, and window treatment.
    —I’m glad your dad isn’t here to see me like this.
    Remington continues to rub her back.
    —I’m sorry you have to, she says. Not just to see me like this, but to be here.
    —I’m happy to be here.
    —Don’t lie to your dying mother.
    —I wouldn’t be anywhere else.
    —Sorry we didn’t have you a brother or a sister to share this burden.
    —Just means I won’t have to share the inheritance.
    She lets out a rare laugh that makes him smile, and he wishes he could think of something else