Smoke rose straight up from the chimney, as if the house raised its hand. As if the house knew the answer.

It had always been a breathtaking view, the kind that made him inhale and forget to exhale . . .

... that same hardware and tackle shop his dad got lost in for hours while Kache waited in the truck, writing lyrics on the backs of old envelopes his mom kept in the glove compartment for blotting her lipstick. Kache had written around the red blooms of her lip prints.

During those times, only under piles of blankets did she feel substantial enough not to drift away; they kept her weighted down and a part of the world. But eventually her dog's persistence and her own strong will would win over, and she'd drag herself up from the thick bog and go back to her chores and her books, carving the missing days into the wall so they did not escape entirely.

Kache did not know how to rewind his life, how to undo the one thing that had undone him. His world was indeed flat, and he'd fallen off the edge and landed stretched out on a sofa, on pause, while the television pictures moved and the voices instructed him on everything he needed to know about everything--except how to bring his mom and his dad and Denny back from the dead.

Either way, the view stabbed its way into his chest, as if it were trying to finish him off before he even landed.

This was the part of the road he knew best, the part his old blue Schwinn had known so well that at one time, the bike might have found its way back home without anyone riding it.

With all her finesse for cleaning, Snag sometimes felt that her biggest contribution to mankind was making a mess of things.

The TV shouted an old black-and-white film he didn't recognize, wheelchairs facing it like church pews.