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between them and him. And now she saw what she hadn’t been able to see from the other side of the glass: he wasn’t just wet. He was pouring.
    Water was running from his hair down his dark coat, dripping from his nose and ears and chin. Water pooled at his feet. It dripped off the ends of his sleeves, down his front, down his legs. It coursed over his face steadily.
    And it wasn’t the rain. A light drizzle was falling behind him, beyond the porch. But under the porch, the visitor had a roof over his head.
    And yet the water kept sliding down his face.
    The man’s mouth was still moving, but there was no sound. It moved the same way again and again, like he was repeating himself.
    The water poured off him and his lips moved, on and on. And the cold sickness suffused her, rose in a wave through her body until it felt deafening….
    “Jax,” she whispered, struggling against it. “Do you know what he’s saying?”
    There was no answer from Jax till she turned to look at him. He was staring at the man, the man he said wasn’t a person at all.
    The Pouring Man.
    “ Where is she ,” said Jax tonelessly. “ Where is she .”
    Cara couldn’t help herself. She grabbed the door and slammed it.
    The bang reverberated through the sleeping house.
    She stood there shivering uncontrollably.
    Behind them someone spoke.
    “What’s going on?”
    Both of them jumped, squealing.
    But it was only Max, standing at the top of the stairs in his boxers, hair all tousled and sticking up. He looked like a cranky, messy version of James Franco.
    “You woke me up! It’s the middle of the night! What is it, man?”
    They looked at each other. They were still breathing hard, still trembling.
    “Uh, sorry, Max,” said Cara.
    “I couldn’t sleep,” mumbled Jax.
    “Just keep it down, would you?” said Max grumpily, and shambled back toward his bedroom.
    They waited a minute, until they heard his room door close.
    “Is he gone?” asked Cara, in a low voice.
    Jax knew who she meant.
    “Not yet,” he said.
    Slowly, with butterflies in her stomach, she turned back to the diamond pane in the door. It was just inches from her face. She leaned forward bit by bit and looked out.
    There he was.
    Close.
    Closer.
    Right there.
    His white face with dark hollows of eyes.
    The lips still working, working.
    Where is she.
    “Go away,” said Cara. It was almost a whimper.
    And then, just like that, his face vanished.
    “ Now he’s gone,” said Jax calmly.
    They decided to share her room. Jax pulled his sleeping bag right up onto her bed, on top of the covers, and she felt the weight of his small body. She turned to face in the same direction and draped her arm over his side.
    Outside, the Pouring Man wanted their mother.
    He was looking for their mother.
    That was what he had meant by Where is she . Cara was sure. On that point, she didn’t have to ask Jax.
    She thought she’d never go to sleep, she was so confused. She felt kind of dazzled, in fact, as though something she couldn’t understand had been flashed in her face. A side of the world she’d never seen.
    A shadow world beneath this one.
    Where is she. The water pouring off of him.
    It was a black whirlwind. But at the same time, deep inside it, there was a kernel of new hope … because maybe this was a sign that her mother really hadn’t just left their dad, or left them. That there was something else at work.
    Something hidden.

Three
    The smell of pancakes and melting butter wafted up to her room in the morning and brought her out of a half-suffocating dream of ice and a big white face. She jiggled the mattress as she got out of bed, waking up Jax. Pancakes were one of their dad’s few edible recipes; this time of year he put in fresh blueberries, which he bought at a roadside stand in front of a cranberry bog on 6.
    “Wait,” said Jax, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with his fists. “I gotta come down with you.”
    She went to the bathroom sink to brush her teeth and