Elena's phone worked on the shore.
She found it in her pocket, cracked and damp. The number she called was Bea's. She knew it without looking. Bea answered before the first ring had finished and said something loud and indecent that made Elena want to laugh.
“Where are you?”
“By the lake. South of the dock. Miles is hurt. We can't walk any farther.”
“I can see smoke. Stay there. We're coming.”
Elena set the phone on a stone and moved closer to Miles. He sat with his back against a birch, the towel-wrapped hand in his lap. A ragged hole had burned through the sweatshirt near his left shoulder. She could see his T-shirt beneath it. His feet were bare; she did not know when he had lost his shoes.
“Someone's coming,” she said.
He nodded.
She had a scarf in her handbag. The bag was gone. She looked around for something dry and found only her own sweater, damp at the hem. She took it off and put it around his shoulders. Under it she wore a thin long-sleeved shirt. The morning air was cold, but she could still move. He could scarcely keep his teeth from striking together.
He watched her tuck the sweater around him. “You were wearing that,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Inside.”
She paused. “I don't remember.”
He turned his head away. Across the bay the fire hissed among the collapsed beams. A white sheet of steam rose from them and drifted between the trees. Elena knew they had come out of that building. She remembered the kitchen steps, the shore, his weight against her. She had a great fear of the open doorway behind those memories, though she could not summon what lay within it.
There was a mark on his cheek, a bruise shaped strangely above the scrape. She did not know how he got it.
“Was I with you all night?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you know Daniel?”
Miles looked at her sharply. She could feel his answer become difficult before he gave it.
“Yes.”
“I know he was my husband.” She tried to find a face that belonged to the word. There was a face in photographs, a man whose clothes she had kept. She tried to picture a morning with him and found no room to put him in. “I can't remember him.”
Miles pressed his good hand against his mouth. She waited. The lake made a small sound against the stones.
“You knew that would happen,” he said.
“I chose it?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
His eyes went to the towel. “To get us out.”
She looked at the hand. It had swollen through the fabric's loose folds. “Did I hurt you?”
Miles shut his eyes. “You shut a door.”
She waited for the rest. He did not give it. She put her hand on the stone beside his, leaving a space between them.
Voices came from the trees. Bea appeared first, slipping on the bank in boots she wore for walking her dog. Elena knew those boots. She had borrowed them once for a muddy charity event. The memory arrived whole, full of Bea's complaints and the smell of wet grass. Elena almost cried with relief.
Bea crouched and took her face in both hands. “You stupid woman,” she said, and kissed her forehead. Then she saw Miles properly and called back to the others.
There was Jo, older than her voice on the phone, and the caretaker in a fluorescent jacket. Two ambulance workers followed with bags. Someone put a blanket around Elena. Someone knelt beside Miles and spoke to him gently, asking about the injured hand. Elena moved out of the way.
Miles caught her sleeve before she went too far. His good fingers were cold.
“There's a woman,” he said. “Sana. My phone.”
“I'll ring her.”
He let go. She found the phone in the waterproof pouch beside his hip and held it while he told her how to unlock it. Sana's name was at the top of the call list.
The woman answered with a breath so sharp that Elena knew she had been waiting. She told her Miles was alive, that people were with him, that he would be taken for help. Sana asked who was speaking.
“Elena Ward.”
There was a silence. Then, “Stay with him until they take him. Please.”
“I will.”
Elena crouched beside the birch again. Miles was answering questions. He looked at her once, and she saw something in his face she could not name without knowing him better. She kept the promise she had just made and stayed where he could see her.
When they were ready to move him, the sun had cleared the hill. The house had ceased to be a house. A piece of blackened rail stood at the edge of the lake, with no porch behind it.
Elena looked for grief. She felt shock, exhaustion, a great raw vacancy. She knew there ought to be a man inside that vacancy and could not make him come. Bea put an arm around her.
“Come on,” she said. “One step. Then we'll do the next.”
Elena could do steps. She stood and went with her.